SIR – I have waited about a month to respond to weekly columnist John Phillpott’s latest criticism of me (Worcester News, July 27) in a 20-year series because I have been trying to track down any piece of paper which will prove, definitively, that Cripplegate Park would have been increased in size by the development and improvement that he keeps banging on about.

It has, not, however, been straightforward.

People have moved on, office relocations have been many (as have corporate reorganisations) and, crucially, there was never actually a formal planning application (only an inprinciple discussion).

However, I have contacted and talked to several people who were around at the time and they all confirm that what I am saying is correct although, of course, after 20 years, nobody, including me, can recall the exact percentage increase.

It is totally false to accuse me of supporting an outline proposal for “a supermarket right in the middle of Cripplegate Park”, nor of “a sea of concrete with a supermarket as its central piece stretching from the cricket ground to the Severn”.

It simply was not like that.

The park would have been extended to the river and the retailer would have been confined to the western end.

He uses a rather completely inappropriate form of words when he talks about “intactness” of memory.

Would one need this faculty to determine, for example, whether Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne at the time?

There are but two possibilities, I’m afraid.

Either Mr Phillpott did not understand what was proposed and did not do his homework adequately; or he did, but chose to ignore fact in favour of a populist newspaper-selling campaign.

In other words, he was lazy or he was cynical.

In any event, this ongoing criticism is damaging to my reputation and presumably was intended to be.

I have no plans at present to issue proceedings for libel, but an apology in mitigation would be nice.

I suppose that I should confess that I ‘have form’ here – 35 - 37 years ago, I successfully ran “the biggest libel case in British legal history” [Robert Alexander QC] against a national Sunday newspaper.

The search for the proof of the intended expansion of Cripplegate’s parkland goes on.

I may say that Mr Phillpott’s looser and looser language over time shows that he really does not have a good hold on this.

He probably expects me to go away but I’m not.

It’s as recently as March last year that he reported that he had “buried the hatchet” with me.

Thank goodness that he’s not still on the warpath!

DAVID BARLOW

Worcester