YOU reported last week that Broms-grove District Council is angered by the low level of rate support grant from the Government and will seek a meeting with the Local Government Minister to ask for more cash.

I think the council should firstly consider carefully how it proposes to spend the money it already has.

There was the grandiose scheme to redesign Sanders Park (which fortunately was dropped), and two more recent schemes involving considerable sums of money -- namely the 'improvements' to the A491 road to Hagley and the 'traffic calming' in Stoney Hill.

The council's plans designed to make the A491 road safer involve reducing this dual carriageway to a single lane each way and closing several of the crossing points. This would cause people to travel much further on all their journeys and delays to everyone stuck behind a farm vehicle or heavy lorry.

Thus the road improvements of yesteryear would be sacrificed. Why doesn't the council activate the speed cameras and then prosecute offenders?

Cutting Fordhouse Road in two to stop speeding traffic short-cutting the delays on the A38 bypass, and a host of humps in the other roads, is a case of employing a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and the wrong nut at that!

In the absence of any survey and analysis of the actual traffic problem, one can only guess that the best solution may be to remove the delays on the bypass, which could be expensive. If speed humps in East Road and College Road are expected to reduce speeding, why won't it work in Fordhouse Road?

Graham Reddie,

East Road,

Bromsgrove.