The planning application for a three-screen cinema right in the centre of Minehead (Free Press July 19) is surely one of the most important developments for the town in decades.

And behind all the renewed hope is a sorry tale which could have seen it happen last year.

The mistakes and disgrace of last year must not be allowed to happen again, as Minehead could already have had a cinema by now.

The plan to create a proper cinema is on again if the district council approves the new application by businessman Pat Scott to convert the abandoned large retail site next to The Regal Theatre in The Avenue for movies every day of the week and at what he promises is at low cost.

He runs similar successful independent cinema enterprises in Burnham on Sea and Frome, so it appears he knows what he’s doing.

Mr Scott had offered to buy and convert the boarded up Queen’s Hall on the seafront into a cinema, but what happened was a surely disgrace.

One week the project was on, next week it was off. Next week it was on, then it was off.

Then it was all off and as the Free Press reported, Mr Scott was eventually totally fed up with a lack of any support, and even facing objection from just a few people running the Regal.

In my opinion these inert twilight people should sleep ill in their beds.

A supposed 50-year-old legal covenant that the Queen’s Hall, an Edwardian theatre, could never be used as a cinema was invoked.

How arcane is this? Who stated this? No one knows. Why did the Regal Theatre care that the Queen’s Hall might re-open, far away from them and for a different purpose?

Honestly, you could not make this up, as the “rival”: Regal Film Society only shows a film once a month to club members and is by no means whatsoever a cinema.

And here’s the crunch - Mr Scott’s bid last year, as far as I know, was supported by not a single one of our three councils, simply not caring a hoot or getting involved in a potentially stunning project.

What a shower of unimaginative councils. They offered not a word or a penny (not asked for) of support.

The man was on his own and he just walked away.  The Queen’s Hall is still a boarded-up tragic carbuncle disgrace on the Minehead prom.

Now he is back with a bid to convert and even re-roof and re-face the ugly former Lifestyle Store between the Co-op and the Regal as a major attraction for the people in West Somerset.

What I would urge is not only that the planning application be fully approved, but that all three councils - town, district and county - offer this man every support they can imagine to mak