SIR – Mr Pickles, the secretary of state for communities and local government, is guest speaker at a dinner in Bradford this week – so a few words word of warning to his audience.

Demographic and other changes mean that the demands on local councils to provide services have increased significantly. Despite this Eric Pickles has presided over drastic cuts to central government funding for local authorities. Bradford Council has had its grant reduced in two tranches of £100m and £115m.

Apart from starving of local government of resources, additionally there is the secretary of state’s high-handedness in dealing with others and his insistence on controlling from the centre. His rhetoric of “localism” thinly cloaks a metropolitan centralism. From Whitehall Mr Pickles has taken to dictating whether councils can allow people to park on kerbs or can film in council chambers. Councils are quite capable of deciding these issues locally. It is interference of the worst sort – and undermines local democracy.

Introducing Police and Crime Commissioners was a Pickles “master stroke. Experience in South Yorkshire – and the inability of the system to sack a patently inadequate post-holder – marks another Pickles own-goal.

John Cole, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon