The New Year has begun on a very odd note. The current MP for Hove and Portslade, Mike Weatherley, asserted that he had somehow “embarrassed” Brighton and Hove City Council into tackling plans for a new leisure centre on the King Alfred site (The Argus, January 2).

This delusion is at odds with an array of facts.

Green councillor Geoffrey Bowden, by his own initiative, made it a priority to establish a cross-party Project Board to establish what is needed on the site and how it might be feasible.

Part of the reason for this was to ensure that plans did not become mired in the party-political cavortings which have hobbled the site for 45 years – including the recent Tory administration’s failure even to contemplate work upon a complex and constricted site.

Councillor Christopher Hawtree, Green, Central Hove ward, Brighton and Hove City Council