The “new vision” for Salisbury (Journal, July 30) is truly fantastic – it has no relation to reality. The author seems to have descended into the realm of outright delusion.

He intends to “replicate the innovation economy of Oxford and Cambridge”, but fails to realise that those cities each possess a world-leading university with multi-million pound research budgets and a stream of graduates full of bright ideas.

Salisbury, in contrast, has only the under-funded Wiltshire College, and most of its brightest youngsters go off to study elsewhere at age 18. Though Porton Down possesses some expertise in the limited and controversial field of chemical and biological warfare research, this hardly makes Salisbury comparable to Oxbridge.

He then plans to put his new “technology park” on Churchfields Industrial Estate, whose only lorry access is under Fisherton Street railway bridge, where (as SCAN showed earlier this year) air pollution is already 50 per cent above the European permitted maximum. Improved access could only be provided by either demolishing most of Lower Bemerton or constructing a new road on stilts across the water meadows — both equally unacceptable — so the only sensible redevelopment for Churchfields is housing.

Salisbury was last year rated as one of the top ten tourist destinations in the world and is one of few traditional market towns to have retained its vibrant open-air market, but the report wants to “shift the economic focus away” from these assets.

It wants the Maltings redevelopment based round a big new hotel, but ignores the need to maintain our visitor infrastructure by retaining and improving the existing coach station and replacing our lost bus station, or by replacing our lost hostel-type accommodation, though you would certainly find an abundance of hostels in both Amsterdam and Berlin — two cities the author seeks to emulate.

“Rebranding” is ad-man-speak for spending money on windowdressing without substance, and the ideas of an “iconic sculpture”

and another costly revamp of the market square are exactly this, while money for “refreshing” the Playhouse and City Hall would be better devoted to restoring the 100 per cent cut inflicted on the Arts Centre.

GE OUBRIDGE Salisbury