AS chairman of North Hinksey Parish Council I feel obliged to write with reference to the recent article ‘Arsonists wreck £3,000 platform’ (Thursday’s Oxford Mail).

This most recent article contained misinformation and statements from Robin Carr against the parish council.

The article contains the following: Robin Carr, 64 of Hurst Rise Road said: “We said all this would do would simply attract vandalism. And it has. Nobody really wanted it, apart from the parish council”.

A strange and inaccurate statement to make as the decision to build a viewing platform was mandated by local residents who attended a consultation meeting last February.

A number of proposals in the Louie Memorial Playing Fields project, including the viewing platform, were displayed for approval or rejection. The platform display board asked “Would you like a viewing/dipping platform to the edge of the lower wetland to provide safe access to the waters edge without disturbing the remaining more sensitive areas?”.

It received 64 per cent support, plus support from schools, as it could be used for educational field study work. The results of the consultation were circulated to all households in a newsletter, which included Mr Carr’s address. Mr Carr was also featured in a previous article earlier this year where your paper reported how some residents of Hurst Rise Road had called for parish councillors to be replaced after they ordered the pruning of trees in the copse.

Parishioners may recall that the original article said that residents claimed 50 trees had been attacked, instead of the true facts which were that nine willows had been pollarded and five others trees coppiced. It is a poor tree specialist who does not know that willows do need pollarding when split and damaged.

All expert tree advice states that the pollarded trees will regenerate quickly and in the case of the trees in the fenland, they will be in a much healthier condition than they were before the pollarding took place.

Mr Carr is shown as the treasurer and Dr Niki Carter shown as the secretary to a small group of residents who now call themselves Friends of the Louie Memorial Fields & Copse (FOF) and clearly have their own agenda.

The parish council accepts it is the right of any individual or body to express a view but it is irresponsible at best, and mischievous at worst, to provide wrong or incorrect information.

All the parish council asks is that Mr Carr and FOF report facts that are correct and not inaccurate, as such misrepresentations are a disservice to the remainder of the residents in North Hinksey (approximately 4,500) and a slight on the work being undertaken by the parish council.

BRIONY NEWPORT, North Hinksey Parish Council, Oxford