UNDERSTANDABLY it is unlikely that many people living in Hereford and the market towns or close to gritted main roads (allowed the freedom to shop and visit) gave any thought over the festive period to the distress caused to rural dwellers who, due to Herefordshire Council’s uncaring attitude, remained imprisoned by snow and ice on minor roads more than a week after the latest cold snap began.

The council does, of course, provide grit boxes but these are of little help – even when they actually contain grit.

Given the authority's concerns for health and safety elsewhere, how can it expect pensioners (and many countryside residents are, like me, aged) to take very real risks skating around on conditions made treacherous by blades which have left a covering of compacted snow that creates a surface akin to an ice rink?

At the same time, the highways department is responding positively to pleas by the elderly in towns for pavements to be treated. Why should those living in the countryside be expected to provide self-help when all of us pay council tax according to the same scale?

Many people must feel, like me, that the council is treating people living in the open countryside as second-class citizens prepared, ad nauseum, to put up with inferior services – other than refuse collection which is first-class – especially as they relate to the maintenance of minor roads and efforts to keep them open in difficult weather conditions.

As an aside, what an indictment of our policymakers/executives it is when, before winter officially starts, the highways department is forced to issue a newsletter advising grit stocks are at a critical level and they are not even in a position to refill grit boxes.

MIKE POLLITT, Wigmore, Herefordshire.