Reader’s letter: Worthing’s Brooklands Park is now a ‘shambles’

In the 1960s, when Brooklands Pleasure Park was in its heyday, it was able to boast of many excellent facilities: a boating lake with sailing dinghies and motor boats, a miniature railway, two cafés, two nine-hole pitch and putt golf courses, a putting green, go-karts, an animal-themed series of paddling pools next to a concrete rock scrambling feature, a well-equipped children’s playground which included a wooden fort and a park keeper to keep watch and provide a safe environment.

I know, I was there, and I have visited the park every year since then.

Unfortunately, the council has permitted a year-on-year decline into wasteland – an absolute tragedy. So, what now?

An ill-conceived scheme to turn a pleasure park into a nature reserve, providing visitors with similar experiences to the Widewater, Sompting Brooks and, of course, the distant Sussex Downs.

I am sure that holidaying visitors, local children and their parents will be overcome with enthusiasm.

Even the plans for the new path on the eastern side of the lake are problematic.

Why does the northern end of the pedestrian path terminate in the car park rather than follow the well-trodden track past the toilets to the bridge?

Oh, and by the way, why was it necessary to close the toilets?

The current earthworks could have continued whilst still allowing access to the toilets.

Perhaps someone should have told the planners about the new access gate which was put in to allow contractors access to the lake for dredging and maintenance.

The team working on the new footpath could have used this entrance for their vehicles and materials to avoid closing the northern car park, which has denied access to the Covid testing team and learner drivers and cut off a valuable source of income for the council.

Finally, was it really necessary to destroy the historic Brooklands motor boat being used as a planter? What a shambles!