Everyone loses

IF a private company in Ledbury were to suggest that because its premises did not allow access to the disabled, it was going to put temporary buildings in a town car park, Herefordshire Council would, rightly, tell that company precisely where to get off.

However, when the 'company' facing the problem is the council itself, it decides this is exactly what it is going to do.

As a result another building in the town, the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Institute, will be unused and boarded up; the town will lose more car park spaces when there are not enough already; the centre of an historic town will be disfigured by an ugly temporary building; this will be a natural and unprotected target for vandalism; all library users will suffer from a degradation of stock and facilities - for example will computers really be kept in such a building? £40,000 is unnecessarily spent.

A crazy knee-jerk reaction has resulted in a crass and disgraceful decision. It is hard to credit the mentality of whoever proposed this so-called solution, but even harder to credit that our elected representatives apparently just put their hands in the air and bleated "yes".

We have full sympathy with disabled people unable to gain access to the current building, but a situation where everyone, library user or not, loses cannot be right.

BRIAN & CHERYL HUDSON, Progress Close, Ledbury.