Jerry Gilby, of South Ford Road, Dartmouth, writes:

Back in September we all had to remove our boats and ­trailers from the boat park in Coronation Park ready for imminent improvement works.

At a drop-in meeting a few weeks later we were told there were to be proper access tracks, Grasscrete areas for the boats and a secure gate.

Now, five months later, when works are finally due to start, the plans show that these proposals have been diluted to virtually nothing, no doubt due to pressure from the eco-warriors – didn’t they scupper the new slip? – and members of the Coombe Road Tree Felling Society.

So now the plans show that there will be no Grasscrete and just a short access track that leads nowhere, so we will end up with the same boggy mess we have now. All in all, a total waste of time and money.

Then, to add insult to injury, come the new regulations. So for getting no worthwhile improvements the fees will go up by 61 per cent in the most common, medium-size band of four to 5.5 metres. Additionally, vehicles are banned from towing trailers into or out of the boat park.

The new regulations have clearly been written by someone with no knowledge of boats. The majority of boats in the medium-size band could not be launched safely down our dangerous public slipway without the use of a vehicle.

So if we cannot hitch up in the safety of the park, we have to push our boat/trailer to the exit and hitch up on a dangerous blind bend before proceeding across the triangle to the ­slipway. This assumes, of course, that we can actually move the trailer, which will have sunk into the boggy mass that should have been Grasscrete.

Then we come to the prejudice against motorised craft. The new application form states that if you dare to have an outboard on your boat, you will go to the bottom of the waiting list.

When you consider that, aside from gigs, rowing club boats and club canoes, the rest of the craft are motorised, this is a very strange stance. It is totally unreasonable that someone who has had a berth in the park for some time should drop to the bottom of the list because their boat happens to have an outboard. After all, the boat park is the only off-water public storage area for small craft in Dartmouth.

Coronation Park was given to the town as an area for local people to enjoy various recreational pursuits, which would include family activities, people just enjoying the air and sports, which once even included cricket before South Hams Council failed in its duty to have the park repaired after the regatta.

However, being a seafaring town, recreation for others is to mess about in boats, and for small boats this necessitates being able to remove them from the water for various purposes.

This surely means an ­adequate boat park with safe access, which is not what we are getting.

Boats are a source of ­fascination for many, especially ­visitors, and they do not detract from the attributes of the park and so should not be penalised in this way.

Hopefully, those at Follytown House will review this whole debacle.