Lawrence Alkin (Letters, November 5) appears to believe the public meeting on the Endeavour tower block was taken over by a well-organised group who were only there to disrupt the meeting.

Mr Alkin should get out more and perhaps attend a few political meetings to see some really heated arguments.

To suggest this meeting was taken over by an unruly mob is quite ridiculous. Perhaps he thinks Ken Fines, the retired chief planning officer for Brighton, was part of this group.

He certainly put forward a well-reasoned argument as to why the Endeavour tower would ruin the Preston Park conservation area and of course had a few derogatory words to say about the design of the building.

Perhaps the two councillors were part of the mob. Labour councillor Kevin Allen criticised the way the proposed private apartments in the tower would dominate and be segregated from the social housing.

Green councillor Richard Mallender had some detailed criticisms on sustainability issues, which the Karis Developments expert found difficult to refute.

There were also many residents of the area who put forward robust criticism of the project.

They weren't really an unruly mob as all of them said who they were and if they spoke for too long they were stopped by the chairman, who controlled the meeting with firmness and good humour.

But perhaps residents were supposed to go along and just politely applaud Piers Gough, the architect of the scheme, even though many of them are living in small Victorian houses next to which he wants to build a massive 16-storey block.

During his presentation he even said there were no apartments on the ground floor of his tower block because the environment of the immediate area was of such poor quality. (Of course the presence of a massive 16-storey tower block may well create an environment of poor quality).

This wasn't the most diplomatic of remarks to residents living next to the site in Springfield Road, Preston Road and Stanford Avenue.

-Malcolm Dawes, chairman, The Brighton Society