RON Shambley raises the important question of council neglect of badly littered stretches of public highway and verges. His visiting American friend describes Bolton as effectively last on the list for any inward business investment recommendation until civic pride and performance over such neglect is restored (‘Litter and squalor’ are putting investors off our town, March 31). Sadly, it has been missing for years.

Mr Shambley does not need to be told that part of the problem is that council environmental management see street “cleansing” as being strictly focused upon rigid processes, such as regularly emptying street litter bins and occasionally picking up around the immediate area of the bins. Open stretches in between are “off the radar”

and get neglected for years or even decades.

Ron might think he has seen the worst of it, but an area that is bad for litter is close to open land at what was The Water Place. I asked three years ago for the mess to be dealt with and all I got was the pathetic excuse that that area used to be cleared by staff from the pool and is not being done as they are not there now. A commitment to change the schedule proved worthless.

As a result of my efforts a few years ago, I managed to put the badly littered hedgerow and car park at Bromley Cross station on the cleansing list. The matter was raised with the GMPTE and they agreed to fund a quarterly litter sweep there. As it is a littered mess as I write, and simply not being done, the council may well still be receiving money for a service it fails to perform. I will be writing to GMPTE at the end of the month to suggest it ceases any payment to the council until it gets its act together.

Lastly, Ron, you might like to know that I asked a few months ago of management why the council customer care policy had been suspended by supervisors.

When an email is totally ignored, rather than replied to promptly, officers are effectively taking it upon themselves to supplant official council policy with what they prefer. As employees, they are on shallow ice with that arrogance. When senior management then made it clear to me that they didn’t deal with the public direct over shortcomings and that my complaint would not be allowed or properly investigated, I realised that such staff have absolutely no right to expect to be in guaranteed paid employment for years.

The contempt shown to those who pay their wages comes about because the council faces no competition for what it does, so it doesn’t matter how it performs, or how its staff behave. It is an organisation badly in need of capable leadership at the top and complete root and branch reform.

Simon Pearce Bromley Cross