Sir,-In an ideal world the museum would very much have liked to have been able to move from the Old Town Hall to 'The kirk on the Green'.

However, the Board has decided with regret that in the short term, it would not be possible to do this in the present economic climate. If circumstances change then the board would look at this scheme again.

As chairman of the Museum of Richmond, I would not expect Richmond upon Thames Council to pay out the necessary sums for us to move to The Green, when they have other equally pressing financial demands to meet. What the museum is proposing to do is to refurbish the present site so that the collection is presented in a more exciting way.

I would also think it is unfair to blame the council, this one or the last. The real problem, as many of us know, is that the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames receives a far lesser grant per head than the other London boroughs.

If we want the council to be more generous, then we must persuade central government to modify the present local authority system of funding.-John Moses, Chairman, Museum of Richmond, Old Town Hall, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond.

Sir,-The Environmental Forum was set up in 1998 under the umbrella of the Richmond Environmental Information Centre at 55 Heath Road, Twickenham.

Its membership consists of representatives from most of the amenity societies across the borough. There are more than 20 of these with a combined membership of more than 10,000.

In the case of the kirk on the Green', we all agreed without exception to support the Richmond's Society's museum proposition but not to the exclusion of other suitable proposals. What we were faced with was a totally unsuitable proposal for a monstrous block of flats which was later watered down to a smaller monstrous block of flats attached to the front of the church facing The Green (ie a grotesque attempt to give the proposal an air of respectability in order to gain planning approval).

The forum planning group objected to the plan at the council planning meeting but the council approved it willy nilly.

But they approved it before English Heritage or the Victorian Society had given it their blessing so the planning approval granted was technically invalid. English Heritage and the Victorian Society must approve of demolition of a listed building such as this before demolition takes place.

No approval has been given by either party. In fact the Victorian Society have been given misleading information from the council office about the status of the plan.

The Environmental Forum is doing its best to protect our environment on your behalf in accordance with proper planning procedures carried out to the letter.

The government has passed the decision to the present council to decide but they must do so strictly in accordance with English Heritage's advice and that of their own staff which has never favoured the plan as approved by the previous council.

So I say to the correspondents and others who doubt our motives, that our new council can hardly approve a plan which does not have the requisite listed building consent.-John Thurston, Environmental Forum Planning Group.

July 9, 2002 12:00