WHEN will Herefordshire Council “get real” and remember that it is supposed to be looking after the county as a whole not just Hereford city centre?

Hereford houses less than a third of the county’s population; 24 per cent live in the five market towns and 45 per cent in the villages, hamlets and countryside classified as rural.

Planters, parks and “active travel links” are of no benefit to those of us who don’t live in the city. Riding a bike 20 or 30 miles to get to work or to go shopping in Hereford is not an option.

Go by bus? OK, if you happen to live on a speedy bus route but very few people do.

OTHER NEWS:

And the ‘park-and-choose’ sites shown on the council’s masterplan map are a joke! I can see that none of Herefordshire Council’s expensive London-based consultants has ever been to Eardisley, for example!

The only choice for most of us going to Hereford is to go by car, but if the council abolishes car parks or makes parking more difficult we will just stop going.

That’s a shame for the shops, the arts and leisure centres, the hospitality venues and their suppliers, many of which may go bust.

OTHER LETTERS:

We will buy online or as locally as possible and visit Hereford only to go to the hospital or catch a train. As to ‘greening’, isn’t this the council that scrapped the Hereford bypass, has allowed river pollution to build to intolerable levels and proposes to build 17,000 unwanted and unaffordable new houses on thousands of acres of good agricultural land?

Councillor John Harrington bemoans the fact that the county “has very little money” – all the more reason to spend what little it has very carefully.

JULIA EVANS

Lyonshall, near Kington

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