I NOTE that Queenswood Country Park and the Bodenham Lakes are to be managed by Herefordshire Wildlife Trust and Herefordshire New Leaf.

Both organisations are confirming that they have formed a partnership to safeguard the long-term future of the two iconic Herefordshire beauty spots.

Herefordshire Council has also confirmed its intention, subject to public consultation, to transfer the management of both to the partnership, while retaining both in public ownership, via a 99-year leasehold “community asset transfer”.

This all sounds very good, but, in practice, will it work?

Queenswood is a brilliant public facility, precisely the sort of place that we need to keep available to families and their pets Recently there have been attempts to introduce parking charges. Doubtless the new management will try to find other ways to boost their income and to justify their investment. A few years from now, will there actually be a country park or a lake?

I look at recent council decisions and think ‘what exactly is our council for?’ My local library at Bromyard is never open when I call in and a number of villages are setting up libraries in adopted phone boxes.

I no longer receive bin bags but have to buy my own, and every week I have to check on exactly which bin will or will not be emptied.

It seems that I’m paying more and more, while receiving less and less. It’s all very well blaming the government for cutting its subsidies, but is there really nowhere our council can cut its expenditure?

In Ocle Pychard, two local parish councils have spent an estimated £1,400 on a weathervane to commemorate the Queen’s fairly recent jubilee. Given a free vote I would have said ‘absolutely not’ as it adds nothing to the Burley Gate roundabout.

I wish that local residents had come forward at the time and made their feelings known. We need local people to have more involvement in local issues, otherwise the ‘status quo’ will not change.

MARTIN FIELD Burley Gate