Sir - The best that can be said about Gary Kibblewhite's comments (On The Web, 24.3.2014) about the St. John's tower-blocks is that he is being knowingly disingenuous.

He was a Tory on the City Council when it was a landlord. His national leaders, notably Margaret Thatcher, had the crazed idea that council estates were, by definition, perpetual hotbeds of Labour support, and must therefore be eliminated. Accordingly, councils were forced sharply to increase rents so that tenants would become disaffected. This did not work, so councils were then forced to keep rent-increases low, at a level at which they could not afford to maintain and refurbish their properties properly.

Unsurprisingly, this political attrition eventually led to the transfer of stock to housing associations such as Worcester Community Housing. Before this, though, the City Council had carried out numerous major refurbishment and improvement schemes, including that for pre-cast reinforced (PRC) houses. Mr. Kibblewhite simply cannot, therefore, substantiate his wild statement that the St. John's scheme could "never have been imagined" under the City Council.

Finally, guess what's happened to rents and senior managers' salaries since transfer? Both have increased substantially ahead

of the general rate of inflation: surprise, surprise!

David Barlow

Worcester