Brian Parker, of Victoria Road, Dartmouth, writes:

I write as a trustee of Dartmouth Museum. 

Last week in the Chronicle, the article Town museum named among best in country commended the museum for its recent achievements and plans for future improvements.

I took great delight in this report but, on reading the rest of the paper, such pleasure was short lived. 

Instead, there was a realisation that the future improvements in the museum for the benefit of the community and visitors may never take place.

If, at its January meeting, Dartmouth Town Council 'opts for VAT' for the Butterwalk and market, it will create a fiscal tsunami of fearsome proportions which will sweep across its properties, laying waste to most of the businesses therein. 

The proposal to add 20 per cent to the already punitive rents of the smaller businesses that cannot reclaim VAT may well be the extra straw that causes them to collapse. Is this what the council wants?

The museum is among the smaller businesses. Our entry fees are modest, as they should be, and our year-end surplus would place us at the bottom of the small businesses, which, again, is as it should be.

A 20 per cent increase in rent would cause us difficulties.  We would manage to continue as we are but we would have to say goodbye to our vital and carefully crafted plans for expansion of the museum upwards into the former flat.

This flat, covering two floors and accessed by the fire escape at the rear of the Butterwalk, has been unoccupied for more than two years. The council, it has been reported, had intended to re-let it for a rental of £10,000, once it is renovated to a lettable standard, the renovation costing £60,000 or more.  Quite rightly, the council has shied away from this option.

Instead, the museum has offered to rent the flat, accessed internally by the pole staircase passing upwards from the floors below, for £10,000 with no renovation cost to the council. 

The renovation for museum use is very much less costly than that necessary for domestic property and the museum would meet that cost. 

After much careful negotiation, this arrangement of mutual benefit to the council and the museum is close to agreement. 

The imposition of a 20 per cent increase in rental would consign this proposal to history.  Is this what the council wants?

Like many others, I find VAT business something of a black art. The council wants to reclaim VAT on its own project expenditure and is intent on adding VAT to rents for onward transmission to the Treasury with all the collateral damage this would cause. This cannot be right. 

My understanding is that council business is already VAT registered and the rents must be inclusive of VAT. Is the proposal therefore to double levy VAT? The inviting of a VAT expert to address the council is timely.

The museum is a resource for studying the history of Dartmouth. There have been several occasions in the past centuries when the then councils acted in a manner that was judged not to be of benefit to the town. 

I get the impression this council is losing sight of the necessity for such benefit and its prime role, which is surely to act to maintain the character of the town and support small businesses. 

The council risks condemnation by historians in future books of the Chronicles of Dartmouth or, more immediately, that of townsfolk in the the coming issues of the weekly paper.

Is this what it wants?