Julian Head, of Audley Rise, Newton Abbot, writes:

Further to Cllr Connett's letter in your July 22 edition, my point was that rather than offering up scaremongering with slogans such as 'saddled with debt' and 'debt crisis' the people of Teignbridge should be allowed to see what was being purchased before deciding whether the debt was worth the investment.

I, like many other Teignbridge residents, would have been interested to see the actual meat on the bones before deciding whether or not it was worth entering a structured debt to pay for.

True, Cllr Connett, debt has to be paid back, but at these times of unprecedented low interest rates maybe speculation and accumulation may be a sensible approach while the 'ample resources' of the council would be better off spent elsewhere, such as the scrapping of Sunday parking charges as highlighted on the MDA's front page of the same edition.

Anyway, this was all hypothetical as a leak to the paper seems to have scuppered the development plans for now.

However, with regard to Mr Connett's letter, I did rather take exception to being branded a 'Conservative voter', for while I did vote Tory in the General election, part of my reasoning for this was that I felt the top tier management costs of some local authorities (Teignbridge included) needed to be addressed.

On a local level I voted for a rather nice rainbow coalition of Mike Ryan Independent, Anne Shantry Conservative and Gordon Hook, Liberal Democrat, an outstanding and thoughtful man with whom our family have had dealings on a number of occasions.

I would also like to apologise for an inaccuracy in my original letter (July 8) regarding the management structure of Teignbridge Council. I did state that the part-time chief executive was backed up by two deputies at a cost of approximately £230,000, a conservative estimate.

I have since studied the TDC Management Structure a bit closer and we have, in fact, the chief exec, a deputy chief exec and two directors. so my estimate for the costing of Teignbridge's top brass should be nearer £300,000. Couple this with two managers per department operating in their various silos and I really have to ask what do they do all day? answers on a postcard please.

A far better solution would be to have the chief exec and deputy chief exec running the show, thus leaving the managers to manage, and if they can't cope without having their hands held, replace them with more suitably qualified candidates.MORE LETTERS IN OUR DIGITAL EDITION