Rubbish pick to be admired

I WANT to put on record in your newspaper my admiration and thanks for the volunteers I met on March 22, who were litter picking at Newtown Crossroads.

I was travelling along the road on my way between appointments when I saw the group out at work. I stopped, where it was safe to do so, and thanked them for what they were doing.

I want to commend this wonderful group for their hard work and dedication – they made the area of Newtown Crossroads look very clean and tidy indeed.

Thank you very much from all of us who love Herefordshire as a clean, green county. Let’s keep it that way.

Bill Wiggin MP

North Herefordshire

Empty home being taxed

I HAVE just put my flat on the market and as it is presently unoccupied I have found out I will have to pay 100% of the council tax, and if it remains unsold I may have to pay 150%.

How can the council possibly justify this when charging 75% for single occupancy?

My flat does not use the refuse services, library, citizens’ advice, council tip etc.

It does not make holes in the road, discard litter or attend a local school.

Nevertheless it is being charged for these services.

How can an empty flat cost the council more than an occupied one?

It seems quite clear to me that Herefordshire Council is clawing money back from the council-tax payers by any means possible as its funding has been cut.

CHRIS CONSTABLE Chase Road, Ross on Wye

Money going toward robot

ON behalf of my fellow trustees I would like to thank the people of Herefordshire and south Shropshire who have individually, or as part of the Mayor’s Charity, donated to the Robocap charity over the last two years. With your help we have been able to make a significant contribution towards the purchase of a £1.6 million da Vinci surgical robot for the Three Counties Cancer Centre and men needing prostatic surgery will be able to benefit as soon as this summer. This state-of- the-art surgical equipment allows visualisation and magnification of the prostate in 3D during laparoscopic surgery. This precision surgery leads to early recovery and reduced side effects.

Robocap is continuing to fund-raise in order to support the NHS in future purchases of equipment for early diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.

Specific goals will be published on our website shortly (www.robocap.org.uk).

GRAHAM SOLE Dinmore, Hereford

Maintenance work lorries

IN an average week, I see dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of large vehicles rumbling along the roads emblazoned with the words “Highway Maintenance”.

Can someone explain to me just where all this work is taking place, because for sure it’s not taking place in Herefordshire.

GRAHAM CARPENTER Oldfields Close, Leominster

Sign changes money waste

REGARDING the signs that were changed a couple of years ago to replace the apple which relayed to most people that this was the cider county of Herefordshire.

Who wasted thousands of pounds to say that the county can?

We all read the reports in the Hereford Times that the county can’t, so perhaps that person would like to spend more of our money to make a further change.

Why anyone needed the change in the first place is something I and many other council-tax payers would like an explanation for. They have certainly left themselves open to derision now the county is unable to collect rubbish regularly or even to allow us to use the loos.

With the new council tax demands landing on our doormats I am wondering what I and all the other householders are actually getting for our contributions?

MIKE DINNICK Bishopswood, Ross

New houses to be warmer

I WRITE in answer to Anna Coda from Peterchurch who asked the question “what are the benefits” re Newton Farm development (Readers’ Times , March 27).

Having lived across the road from the Oval area for 39 years, I represent the tenants as their local councillor and I have their health and wellbeing firmly focused in my mind. I have watched these properties disintegrate over the years because they were built with reinforced concrete which is crumbling.

Yes, out of the 259 new one/two bedroom flats, two/three/four bedroom houses and 14 bungalows, half will be for social rent; the others to sell on the open market.

This is a normal part of an agreement with the developers who are building the properties.

You ask what are the benefits: for the first time for many of these families they will have a garden of their own for their children to play in safely, the properties will be more economical to run, and will be built to a high standard and therefore warmer.

Since 2002 all social housing was transferred from council ownership to housing associations, such as in this case Herefordshire Housing Ltd. I sit on the housing management group for this development and my constituents know I will ensure all their needs are catered for every step of the way, from re-location for those who want to move away from the area, to ensuring they are helped with removal costs, and that the properties they move into are of a high standard.

I will continue to help those who want to stay in Newton Farm to be allocated the properties which will best suit their family’s needs.

CLLR GLENDA VAUGHAN-POWELL

Independent, Belmont Ward

Meeting was real triumph

A SMALL triumph for democracy.

Like others in the county I have on occasion had my doubts about the quality of our democratic process within the Herefordshire council and indeed the quality of the decision-taking by some of our councillors. I therefore had no great expectation of the planning committee meeting on March 12, which took place to consider and approve or reject a property development proposed for a plot off the Ledbury Road in Bartestree.

This proposal, like so many now swamping the county, was submitted in the interregnum between Neighbourhood Development Plans, such plans providing for property development to take place within a strategy to promote sustainable and appropriate development.

The detail of the proposal in question is available elsewhere but suffice it to say very many in the villages of Bartestree and Lugwardine felt it to have been ill considered, dangerous for residents, and highly damaging to the environment; in particular it would have joined up these two villages and destroyed their distinct characters.

Despite the strength of the arguments against, I think most of us villagers who turned up to the meeting expected a done deal in favour of the proposal.

What a delight then to see genuine space given to local residents to put their concerns on behalf of us all in dignified but heartfelt manner and then to hear councillors one by one voice their own concerns in the strongest of terms clearly having got into the detail of the proposals (the devil is always in the detail) and listened to the weight of local opinion. I recently saw Twelve Angry Men at the Malvern theatre and really this was no less exciting.

One by one councillors spoke up fluently and thoughtfully and in the end any doubters there might have been joined with their colleagues in a unanimous vote against this proposal.

We know most likely the landowner and developer will be back but we will be prepared and hugely boosted in our knowledge that the planning committee acts with the utmost professionalism and intention to get it right for the community notwithstanding pressures from central government and developers.

CAROLYN LAZARUS Lumber Lane Lugwardine

Spare us the councillors

CHARLES Nicholls’ letter on March 6 makes plain what I have thought for some time. We are severely over ‘councillored’.

We have 58 councillors in this tiny county, who with the cost of our CEO and his deputy CEO, cost the council taxpayers £1,000,000.

Indeed the county supports 1,283 councillors of varying hue and, from the appalling condition of the roads, of limited ability.

Are the roads are deliberately left in this state so that come the time for any rise in the council tax, the question will be put... “Do you want the road improved? Well it will cost you?”

We read last week many councillors struggled to understand a memorandum for which they were voting ‘yay or nay’ on matters already decided by half a dozen ‘cabinet members’ .

Is there no chartered accountant in the county who can explain, simply, how our worthy representatives waste our taxes? And is there not a lawyer who can say whether it is possible to initiate an enquiry into a reduction of the ‘councillor burden’ from which we suffer to such little effect?

GWILYM EDMONDSON- JONES Wellington Heath Ledbury

Market site will split city

THE opening of the old cattle market site is going to be a major problem in the not- too-distant future.

This city is going to be split in two, and I fear that High Town, our city centre, will suffer most as a result of what is going on along Edgar Street.

This council cannot see the market site fail. This project is going to haunt it for many years to come.

The major problem our council leader has is in keeping the house in order with other parties and their conflicts of interest.

I also believe that being a unitary authority also plays its part in making decisions that are held by elected members of other factions. This council leader has the unenviable task of keeping harmony .

I recall reading in a letter by Cllr Johnson something about confusion among councillors and the duties they have to fulfil in their elected office. So Cllr Johnson is also a cabinet member and this cabinet is not generally very highly thought of.

It was in 1997 we became a unitary authority and I am unable to recall this being seen in any manifesto. So it should not be out of order to call a local referendum on this... it could be one way of resolving matters arising and bring a little breathing space for our council leader.

Would it help the council out of one of those potholes they’ve fallen into?

CRAWFORD POWNEY Geldof Grove, Hereford

Ratepayers need fair deal

CLLR Bob Matthews wrote an excellent letter (Readers’ Times, March 27) in which he spelled out ‘openness’, which has been needed for years. If we had had it, we might not be in such an open-ended mess today.

Small shops cannot pay the rates, yet we understand traders coming to the new shops are obtaining reduced charges.

Why should we subsidise large businesses which take their profits out of the county, rather than those that have created local businesses which sell to local businesses?

The ratepayers of the county have been totally unheard. No wonder people feel it is pointless saying anything, as it will fall on deaf ears.

GILLIAN BULMER, Breinton, Hereford

Night nurse scandal

DO the people of Herefordshire realise that from 10pm at night until 8am, there is only one night nurse on call to cover the whole of this county of Herefordshire?

Last week, my husband, aged 91, was in need of an emergency procedure, which was life-threatening.

At 3am, I called 999, but it was not until 4.10am that the procedure was eventually carried out.

How can the people of Herefordshire expect one night nurse to cover all points of the compass in this county? Can anyone tell me how many night nurses are employed in the county of Worcestershire, which I am told, has a population of approximately 600,000?

The present population of Herefordshire is said to be approximately 180,000.

I feel that Primecare needs to take a long good look at itself.

HELEN J SIMPSON Eardisland

Herefordshire Hospital is under threat

I THINK we all need to be extremely concerned about whether our NHS is safe in the hands of this Government?

Its plan seems to be run it down, underfund it, then say it’s not working, it needs to be privatised.

My MP Bill Wiggin says he is worried about Hereford hospital being closed, yet he voted with the Government on the recent care Bill.

Hereford has already lost departments to the private sector, the latest being audiology – 49% of the budget can be used to contract in services from private providers, and this is privatisation by the back door.

MRS KAREN NICHOLAS Pennyfields Norton Canon

Food for thought

RE-LETTER Readers’ Times, March 6. Does any other reader find it morally offensive that a Hereford takeaway is challenging customers to consume vast quantities of chicken within a pre-set time schedule, while a growing number of the populace is struggling to get by on restricted benefits and turning to the food bank for their survival?

Perhaps the proprietor and participating patrons, would consider donating to the food bank.

And having reflected on this anti-social, uncaring and downright offensive promotion, the proprietor would, ideally, concentrate on his job – “feeding the faces of folk”.

MRS M FORD, Kingstone

Our town is forgotten

PEOPLE in Ledbury are reeling at the terrible news that drinks manufacturer, UBL-Heineken, is all but pulling its manufacturing production out of our town.

In relation to our modest 10,000 population, this loss of a few hundred jobs, direct and indirect, will have a huge impact on the wider local economy.

Like the nation, ours is a town of two halves – some people are prospering, having ample disposable income, but there are plenty of others who are struggling to keep afloat.

A true sign of the times, we maintain a thriving foodbank in well-heeled Ledbury. The trouble is that the policy-makers in Herefordshire Council and at the Marches Local Economic Partnership seem to think that we can perfectly well fend for ourselves.

Support for economic development? There’s not a sniff of it. Few people here are holding their breath that there will be any concern, much less practical action in response to the UBL closure.

Everything in the Marches Local Enterprise Partner- ship (its members who are completely unelected and largely unaccountable, of course) is focused on the big towns, Shrewsbury, Telford and Hereford.

They are fixated with some imaginary north-south economic artery, along which all good things flow.

Woe betide however if you live points east or west.

Reading through Marches LEP’s economic growth strategy, it’s as if places like Ledbury and the other market towns simply don’t exist.

God knows, Herefordshire Council does pretty well out of the ratepayers and small businesses of our town. We’re even now facing evening parking charges, which is a pitiful move that will inflict further economic damage on the town centre, yet bring the council very little return in revenue.

Ledbury is nothing but a cash cow for Herefordshire Council. The point is, when is Herefordshire Council going to start thinking about Ledbury’s interests?

When is there going to be any consideration of attracting inward investment to our town in pursuit of sustainable jobs?] When are our people going to get a fair deal?

Politicians and policy-people listen up: the people of this town are simmering with discontent.

We’re not a community to trifle with.

Please take off the blinkers right now and let’s start seeing some good things coming our way.

Just remember, in May 2015 we will be turning out for an election and deciding how things are going to be in future.

Rich Hadley Ledbury town councillor Gloucester Road Ledbury