TOWN Hall chiefs continued to defend spending millions of pounds on redeveloping the town centre.

Last week's Guardian reported that new art works will cost the borough council almost £1 million and that sparked arguments against a big spending authority.

One of the main comments from readers was the way it has spent the £21.5 million it made from the sale of 3C Waste.

£5.1 million of that has been allocated to the development of the town centre and the arts centre the latter of which has stalled due to the original developers going bust. This comes at a time when the town's education and social services departments are among the most underfunded in the country.

And the over-riding view is that essential services in the town are losing out to expensive, non-essential developments.

But council leader John Gartside this week defended the spending decisions.

He said: "The money is capital money and had to be spent on capital projects. It was not revenue. Social Services is lowly-funded. It has one of the lowest Standard Spending Assessments in the country, but that is a strict problem with revenue funding. This money is not tax payers' money. It is capital funding.

"We want to make the town centre more attractive to more people so it can compete against big shopping centres in Liverpool and Trafford.

"To put things into perspective, a recent proposal from the private sector to refurbish the Golden Square cost £100 million. Putting £5 million into the town centre shows our commitment to it, which is one of our core policies and one that I feel very comfortable with."