The consultation between Taylor Wimpey and residents about the old Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital site did indeed miss the point (Letters, May 30).

It is not up to residents to compromise the quality or design of a building to maximise profits for a developer. Loud applause greeted the call for incorporating the present building rather than its demolition.

The hospital's Italianate bell towers give an elegant nod to the Italianate villas which surround them. They are local landmarks.

A creative architect like Clough Williams Ellis built a whole town around such features and it is now world famous. The existing buildings at Brighton offer an eclectic mix of architectural elements: classical columns combined with decorative brickwork, chimney stacks and gables, in the best Arts and Crafts tradition.

They give a varied and changing outline, unlike the proposed boring, repetitive slabs.

Come on Taylor Wimpey, retain some elegance and fun.

This city deserves better than the usual "slab-land". Perhaps with so many lay-offs in the company and a plummeting property market, the site is being overdeveloped anyway and a rethink might be wise.

  • Mike Jones, Powis Villas, Brighton

If Taylor Wimpey claims that to preserve at least part of the Royal Alex in its development "would not be financially viable"

(The Argus, May 27), this means it has paid too much for the site.

The value of development sites is normally determined by the planning permission which has been granted. If Taylor Wimpey was rash enough to buy the site before a decision on its scheme had been made, it may have paid too much for it - making preservation unaffordable.

Why should residents foot the bill, in townscape terms, to compensate the developer for the inflated price it must have paid for the site?

  • Selma Montford, hon secretary, The Brighton Society, Clermont Road, Brighton