IT was a very sad day for Bournemouth when Peter Charon decided that he no longer wanted to be a Bournemouth councillor.

I do not know Peter very well but this time last year when he came to see my wife and myself I was very impressed with his vision for the future of Bournemouth and what he wanted to achieve as leader of the council.

He may have been very difficult to work with but most good leaders are not necessarily popular with their staff. For once we had a council leader who was prepared to stand up to senior council officers and not just rubber stamp most of their proposals.

Both the disastrous Imax and surf reef were dreamt up by council officers. In my opinion neither of these two projects would have gone ahead if Peter Charon had been in charge.

I hope that all these “little people” who voted him out now feel really satisfied.

For too many years the council has been treated as some sort of club.

This may have been all right when councillors were amateurs but now they are professionals with cabinet members being very well paid.

As I understand it Peter wanted to change all this and run the council as a business.

Nobody delights in seeing people lose their job but the council is vastly overstaffed and many departments need to be outsourced as soon as possible.

Another major problem that Peter had to put up with was the friction that existed between the East and West Conservative Association, also with members of parliament poking their nose into matters which should not concern them.

Bournemouth can ill afford to lose councillors of Peter’s quality especially after he had been awarded the Advance Leadership Award.

What we have got left is a load of “neverwillbees” and “neverwassers” who will go on spending our money on any hare-brained schemes that the officers can dream up!

DAVID CLUTTERBUCK, Jessop Close, Redhill Ward