Cllr Simon Wright, district councillor representing Westville and Alvington, writes:

I refer to your Rear View Mirror article dated Friday, October 11, 'Turkey-shoot is over, now let's kill the goose'.

This article is misleading as it omits the details of the council's proposal and the background to the decision.

The concept of a levy on supermarkets is one that has  proved successful in Northern Ireland, where large retail outlets attract customers from over the border in Southern Ireland. These large out of town stores impacted local economies and so a retail levy was introduced to provide some financial support for those most affected.

To give that some local context; in Ivybridge, which has a large out of town Tesco store, the levy money could be reinvested into bolstering Ivybridge High Street.

The decision to support the proposal is just that, support. Nothing has been set in stone. In fact, South Hams Council were mindful of the potential negative impact adopting the same rate as Ireland would have and so omitted 8.5 per cent figure from the document. This I believe keeps all our options open at a very local level.

We must remain mindful that in the coming years councils will be the subject to some enormous cuts in their funding. South Hams Council alone has a budget gap of £771.000 for 2014/15 and over the next four year period this gap increases to £2.35 million. If we are to maintain our local services all revenue options must be kept open.