![Councils are dragging their heels over doing work such as improving road markings](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/opinion/2023/09/05/TELEMMGLPICT000149678532_16939320328430_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtGQB12KHxxQCrwnTZkX0nwgWqwm85JEWpGVhFb46TTg.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Letters: A witness to local authorities’ wilful wastefulness and procrastination
Plus: deadly wind turbines; Keegan debacle; mixed bags; asbestos in schools; Royal mail; Rattle's magic; and lacking Colorado beetlemania
![Councils are dragging their heels over doing work such as improving road markings](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/opinion/2023/09/05/TELEMMGLPICT000149678532_16939320328430_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtGQB12KHxxQCrwnTZkX0nwgWqwm85JEWpGVhFb46TTg.jpeg?imwidth=680)
SIR – Isabel Oakeshott is lucky that she has only been waiting a year for a local road to be fixed (“Feckless councils are ripping taxpayers off”, Comment, September 4).
In August 2020 we asked the authorities in Suffolk to install about 35 yards of double-yellow lines in a stretch of street outside our house. Despite unanimous support from the local residents, and the town and county councils, the work has still not been done.
Instead, it has been held up by surveys, planning applications and our local councillor’s earnest explanations of budgetary constraints. All this “work” makes the authorities look busy, but here on the ground we see it for what it is: officially sanctioned procrastination, prevarication and waste.
If it takes three years (and counting) to paint two yellow lines on a road, no wonder so little seems to get done.
Timothy Martin
Nayland, Suffolk
SIR – In October 2022 Oxfordshire County Council proudly announced a new Oxford park-and-ride car park at Eynsham, some 10 miles from the city centre. The scheme will provide parking for up to 850 cars, and a roadside sign predicts “completion by late 2025”.
How on earth can it take three years to build a car park, when a 57-storey skyscraper in Changsha in China was completed in 19 days?
Mike Bridgman
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – I worked for four different local authorities and have to agree with Ms Oakeshott. However, given my experience, I can add that the fault lies not only with the local councils but also with the system itself.
Local “politicians” are not required to have any particular qualifications, being in effect volunteers on expenses. This enables incompetent councillors to make important decisions. However, more than that, the leader of a council ensures that all ruling members follow a party line, thereby putting politics before sound management.
That is why so little gets done – at great expense and to a mediocre standard. It’s the system that needs to change and the politics that need to be erased.
Peter Taylor
Tipton St John, Devon
SIR – South Cambridgeshire District Council, which is planning to allow its refuse collectors to work a four-day week, says: “We can’t just keep adding more and more homes on to existing bin rounds” (report, September 5). Surely the answer, then, is to source more vehicles and employ more bin men.
Admittedly that would involve paying people to work rather than paying them not to work – anathema to this council, apparently.
Neil Bunyan
Flitwick, Bedfordshire
Deadly wind turbines
SIR – Many Tory MPs are no doubt delighted that the ban on onshore wind farms is to be lifted (report, September 4). It is bad news, however, for birds and bats, millions of which are killed by turbines, and for insects, which are killed in their trillions.
This at a time when the natural environment in Britain has never been so depleted, and we are being urged – quite rightly – to help by making our gardens more wildlife-friendly.
Malcolm Symonds
Ashtead, Surrey
SIR – A few years ago, I led a successful community campaign against an onshore wind farm in my backyard, which is also part of Bristol’s green belt. Now I am concerned that I may have to do it all over again.
Essential to success was developing an expertise in planning legislation, as the only arguments that carry any weight are those based on policy. Our group was able to demonstrate that 86 per cent of locals were against the proposal, but that counted for little; it was green-belt policy that won the day.
Ian Thompson
Ingst, Gloucestershire
SIR – It is all very well putting wind turbines out at sea (Comment, September 5), but they will need much more maintenance and probably have a shorter lifespan than those on land, as the salty atmosphere will corrode the mechanism more quickly.
Also, the greater the distance between electricity generation and its point of use, the less will actually arrive. This is one reason why coastal wind farms have to be many times the size of land-based farms.
Nicholas Wightwick
Wrexham, Denbighshire
Keegan’s language
SIR – The PM appointed Gillian Keegan as Education Secretary – a woman who is incapable of expressing herself without using foul language (report, September 5). This sums up the sorry state of this hapless administration.
Robert Leven
Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
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SIR – The astonishing thing about the Gillian Keegan affair is that so many Tory MPs have turned on her as if she were a member of the Opposition.
This is a woman who left school at 16 and, through perseverance, achieved high office. She is a role model for all who are educationally disadvantaged and the best possible advertisement for Conservative values.
With colleagues such as these, she may well share my view that such a divided party is doomed.
Tony Jones
London SW7
SIR – Will Sir Gavin Williamson pay for the behavioural training he has been asked to undertake (report, September 5), or will the taxpayer?
David Ray
Norwich
Bag mix-up
SIR – During our 49-year marriage it has been my duty to do the weekly shop, though my wife writes the list (Letters, September 5). Recently, one item baffled me as well as the kindly Waitrose assistants, who did their best to find the elusive item: a small bag of mixed sausages. It turned out to be a small bag of mixed salad leaves.
Wynne Weston-Davies
Calne, Wiltshire
SIR – I sent my husband out with a list that included pointy peppers. He came back with party poppers.
Shelaigh Spreadbury
Fittleworth, West Sussex
Asbestos in schools
SIR – In Sheffield, one school has been identified as containing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), while about 80 council-maintained schools have asbestos present.
In England, 81 per cent of state schools still have asbestos on their estates. Many former school employees have developed mesothelioma and died as a result of exposure to asbestos at school. It is likely that pupils will also have been exposed and that some will develop mesothelioma as adults.
Last year a parliamentary select committee recommended that the Government introduce a 40-year deadline for the removal of asbestos from its estate, with schools as one of the priorities. This was rejected by the Government. It is probable that removing Raac will expose asbestos in some schools, which will, in turn, need to be removed.
The Government should revisit the select committee recommendations and commence the removal of asbestos, at first from schools containing Raac, then from all others.
Peter Allmark
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
SIR – Nothing sums up the current state of our nation and the need for a change better than your reporting (September 5) that “Network Rail is reviewing its property, but expects only a small impact since most big stations were built during the Victorian era”.
James Sneath
Eastbourne, East Sussex
French border policy
SIR – Douglas Murray may be interested in how the French police deal with immigrants unable to show suitable identity cards as they cross the border by train from Italy to Menton on the French Riviera (“Send illegal migrants to Islington – see how liberal opinion likes it then”, Comment, September 5). They are escorted via the underpass and put on the next train back to Ventimiglia.
Johnny Longley
Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, France
Writing to Royal Mail
SIR – Last week I telephoned Royal Mail (Letters, September 5) to change an address on an account. It informed me that such changes had to be made in writing. I searched for an address on its website, but failed to find one. I phoned again and was told that Royal Mail does not accept post. I had to complete a form on its website.
Jean Ferguson-Davie
Ludlow, Shropshire
A maestro who keeps his audience spellbound
SIR – In response to John Howells’s letter (September 4) on applauding individual movements of symphonies and other works at the Proms, has anyone considered how Sir Simon Rattle manages to hold the audience spellbound, and therefore silent, in his concerts?
I think of his recent performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony – perhaps a more emotionally demanding work than Beethoven’s Fourth – a few days earlier.
Do certain programmes perhaps attract a different type of audience, with different reactions?
Diggory Seacome
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – I once took a friend to a philharmonic concert in Sheffield City Hall. After the symphony’s first movement she was about to break into applause. In the nick of time, I was able to whisper that we only applaud at the end of the symphony.
In earlier years I often saw Sir John Barbirolli conduct the Hallé orchestra. I can only guess what his reaction would have been to intrusive applause. I once saw him raise his baton, lower it, turn around and glare at the audience because someone had coughed.
Janice Clay
Haslemere, Surrey
SIR – I was at the same Proms concert as Mr Howells, when frequent applause broke out.
The Proms are not “refined” orchestral events – just consider the Last Night, for instance. The promenaders and others had attended to hear Chineke! (the first majority ethnically diverse professional orchestra in Europe) perform. I saw nothing but delight on the faces of the conductor and the musicians when they provoked such pleasure and a departure from the shibboleth of no interim applause.
For myself, the conclusion of the first movement of Haydn’s trumpet concerto – performed by Aaron Azunda Akugbo – thoroughly merited such spontaneous appreciation. I, too, succumbed.
Sebastian Reid
London SW15
Ridding Britain of the Colorado potato beetle
SIR – Your report on the invasion of “deadly Asian hornets” (September 5), and the request that the public report sightings, reminded me that in my youth our local police station – and, I think, every one in the country – carried posters alerting us to the presence of Colorado potato beetles, which could devastate crops. They showed a very large beetle with bright yellow and black stripes.
I presume the campaign worked, as I haven’t seen a Colorado beetle – or a warning poster – for decades.
William T Nuttall
Rossendale, Lancashire
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