I READ with some interest the various articles and letters in the Hereford Times about the council tax rate.

Politicians try to make us believe that contracting various traditional council provided services (Fosca for refuse, Shaw Housing, Herefordshire Jarvis Services, Halo Leisure and so on) to the private sector, money will be saved and everything will run more efficiently. I have yet to decide if this is just more facile rhetoric or simply yet another case of Emperor's New Clothes.

With the so-called 'cabinet system' of local government in operation in Herefordshire, with only eight councillors allowed to take part, the opportunity for obfuscation by council officers is huge.

One correspondent mentioned 'job evaluation'. What has happened already is the top rank of council officers have chosen to compare their jobs to what they regard as equivalent ones in industry and negotiate a pay rise in the region of 33% adding £248,000 to the pay bill. Having done so, this same clique then refused to compare employees' jobs with equivalent posts in other local authorities.

The senior managers have been faffing about trying to get job evaluation to conclusion for just over five years. There is a twist to this - if the senior managers' jobs really are equivalent to ones in industry, would any group of shareholders allow them to remain in employment after taking over five years to settle a job evaluation exercise and one which all other unitary authorities created in 1998 were able to settle promptly? Shareholders would not tolerate incompetence and waste, but council taxpayers can do nothing about it at all.

My other query is with so many council services now contracted out, how much of everyone's council tax bill go directly to Jarvis or Fosca shareholders?

Fat cat pay rises for managers of questionable competence and premiums to private company shareholders probably account for the bulk of this year's hefty council tax hike.

B J RODWAY,

Walford, Ross-on-Wye.