CLLR Robert Wilkinson highlighted that there is clear evidence to suggest that many of the "speed humps" constructed within the borough over the last decade or so are substantially larger than intended (and than legislation permits), The Bolton News, April 24.

Despite this, Bolton Council is refusing to undertake a wholesale review of hump sizes, apparently on the grounds that this would be "prohibitively expensive".

As alluded to in the article, the expense which the council considers prohibitive is not the cost of the surveys themselves, but the cost of correcting the large number of defects that the surveys would undoubtedly find.

Historically, the council does not seem to have taken such a view on what can be considered prohibitively expensive when instructing home owners to demolish extensions because they had accidentally been built slightly too high, or slightly too close to an adjacent boundary. This seems very much like "one rule for them and another for us".

If anyone is concerned regarding the size (and hence legality) of speed humps in their area, I would advise them to write to the council's "freedom of information act" officer, Mr Carl Wiper, at the Town Hall.

The council's highways & engineering division should routinely take "as built" surveys of the various traffic calming schemes, as and when they are completed. (If they do not take such surveys, then there is clearly something very wrong with their control over the work undertaken. How do they authorise payment of the contractor, when they do not know that he has built what was requested?). I believe that, under the Freedom of Information Act, any individual within the borough can then request copies of these surveys (as I have just done for two schemes in my local area).

It should be noted that one of the more important issues regarding the size of any speed hump is the gradient of the slopes for the on and off ramps. I understand that these slopes are required to be less than 1 in 18, as any greater can result in damage to vehicles and their occupants.

Craig Howarth, Caldbeck Avenue, Farnworth