Pleased as I am to hear that the elephant (Gazette, July 3) has met its demise the decision raises yet more questions as to how our council is currently functioning.

This is a project which will already have cost significant amounts. As Sir Bob Russell correctly points out the public need to know, in the week we are being told we have to pay for green waste collections due to lack of money, how much this project “everyone is behind” (Cllr Goss, December 2018) has already cost.

Extensive design work on the sculpture and layout has been done. Planning permissions and permits applied for. Greenery has been removed from the roundabout. Officers and councillors have discussed it for more than two years.

Contracts of some sort have presumably been signed. None of this will have come for free.

We are now told any remaining money will be directed towards “greening the route to town”, which presumably a substantial part of will be putting all the greenery back on to the roundabout which was removed for this project.

Public money can’t just be wasted like this.

How long, I wonder, before the council administration find a way to backtrack on the other unpopular giant elephant proposed for the Cultural Quarter when they discover “everyone” is not, in fact, behind it after thousands of pounds of our money has been wasted.

Paul Dundas, Conservative Group Leader, Scythe Way, Colchester