BOLTON Council was given a £230,000 government grant to fund a CCTV scheme on Hall i'th' Wood. But after setting up the scheme, they now find that the funding is insufficient to keep the scheme running.

Now, because of this inexcusable blunder in budgeting (what's new?) and in order to save face in having to explain to government why the £250,000 scheme was in fact a complete waste of money, due to the fact that they couldn't afford to run it, tenants have now been told that they must foot the bill. Their Conditions of Tenancy are to be amended to include a £143 a year charge.

It seems a simple procedure to amend these Conditions of Tenancy, to bleed money from decent tenants. Surely then it would be just as simple to amend them to get shot of the real source of the problems on our estates. If the council was to do what I have been asking it to do for years, and get rid of the riff-raff they allow to live in their properties by using their Conditions of Tenancy, there would be little or no need at all for CCTV schemes.

However, until we have a council with a zero tolerance attitude towards troublesome tenants, a police force in which we have some degree of confidence, and courts where sentences are handed out that actually punish the yobs and the criminals, CCTV schemes seem to be our only hope.

These schemes must however be financed, not by council tenants, but by those whose job it is to see that council tenants are able to live in a safe and trouble-free environment. To ask -- nay force-- tenants to pay for such schemes is tantamount to increasing their council tax by, in this case, £143 a year. This cannot be right!

Brian Derbyshire

Ribchester Grove

Bolton