SIR — What good news that Minehead Town Council has such good financial reserves (Marcus Travis, Your Letters March 15)!

We shall need all the help we can get to encourage the regeneration of our town currently being planned by the Minehead Development Trust, the Visioning Group and now Revive.

Central to these plans is saving the former hospital for the town.

Then it can become the focus of the community, with library, visitor centre, cafés, meeting rooms, exhibition spaces, a small museum and above all, a grand assembly room which stretches the whole width of the first floor (see the trust's new website http://www.mineheaddevelopmenttrust.co.uk">www.mineheaddevelopmenttrust.co.uk).

Meanwhile, Minehead residents have been showing their support for the project by signing pledge forms, promising to donate anything from £1 to £1,000 or more, once the trust is ready to acquire and develop the site.

If you haven't signed up yet, pledge forms are available all over town, eg at the visitor centre, the library, Boots, Toucan, etc.

The more pledges received, the greater support the project can be seen to have locally when the trust applies for funds from major funding bodies.

This iconic listed building, designed by prominent architect James Piers St Aubyn and completed in 1889, was originally built as a public hall for town functions, so it makes good sense to restore it to community use.

It was later taken over by a bank and then repurchased for the town at the beginning of World War One for just £3,000 as a memorial to Geoffrey Fownes Luttrell, who had been largely responsible for the development of Minehead as a seaside resort.

During the war, the Red Cross used the building as a war hospital but by early 1920 it had been returned to the Memorial Committee which had bought it and was then combined with the old Dunster-based Dunster and Minehead Cottage Hospital to became the main hospital for this area. It transferred to the NHS in 1948.

So please, Minehead councillors, do keep and use your reserve funds to contribute to the success of this exciting new venture, and the regeneration of our town.

Sue Lloyd,

Quay Street,

Minehead.