THE Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 was introduced to provide protection against the dangers of working within anything from retail to factory work.

Since then, the Health and Safety Commission has overseen an enormous increase in the range of activities to come under its purview.

Consequently many activities at one time seen as a matter of common sense now fall within its grasp and are often used by over zealous officials whose decisions are then clearly over the top.

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Take, for example, the situation regarding work in Friar Street starting on New Year’s Day. Remedial work was needed for a collapsed sewer at the northern end which has meant that traffic to and from the properties along its length had to use Friar Street as a two-way route instead of one-way.

Something similar happened previously and at that time motorists managed the difficulties with common courtesy, patience, and most importantly, no accidents.

This time we had a plethora of road-warning signs stretching from Barton Road to Old Mill Close and four highway maintenance officers covering that stretch to ‘advise’ motorists on the manner to drive this section.

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Interestingly, the road signs read in Welsh at the top and English below, which rather suggests that the work team at the site were not local.

There were two men working on the sewer problem and four standing around apparently ‘directing’ traffic. No doubt they were doing what they were told to do, but those who authorised this madness were no doubt sitting comfortably at home on the New Year’s Day bank holiday at enormous expense to us.

DAVID JOYCE

Hereford