Propping up café

Unlike all the other cafés in town, this one is losing public money. It is very easy to be cavalier about a failing business when you have not invested your life’s savings into it, but are propping it up out of the public purse.

Mr Evans says it is a popular meeting place. No wonder – everything in it is subsidised by the taxpayer. How many of the other cafes, which are battling against a subsidised loss-maker undercutting them, can say ‘never mind our business is losing money, at least we have a nice place for small lunchtime functions’.

Not good enough. If the parish council needs a place for ‘small functions’, it should be spending that money with real local businesses and spreading its public wealth.

Every other council in the country is struggling to make cuts out of its budget and Rustington can still justify spending council tax on this.

Ask the council tax payers how their contributions should be spent – I can’t imagine they would vote for subsidising coffee.

Also, if I am not mistaken, the special needs persons taken under the café’s wings are paid for by West Sussex County Council – this is not a charitable activity by the parish council.

If the parish council has money to give away, how about spreading it around the struggling businesses – the real businesses – within the parish, or if food is the council’s thing, donating food to the poor who need help with their groceries each week, in these austere times?

Andrew Turner

Chanctonbury Court

Rustington