SIR - There has been much discussion about the whys of the Rotherham grooming scandal cover-up, but very little about the hows.

In other words, how were council officials able to sweep not one, but three damning reports under the carpet without anybody noticing?

To anyone who has recently been engaged in any sort of campaign to make BMDC see sense and change its mind (Menston and Buck Lane spring immediately to mind), the answer will be only too clear.

The real lesson of Rotherham must be learned. Councils like Bradford have to become more open and subject to scrutiny. The bureaucratic barricades that generations of council jobsworths have erected to keep themselves safe from responsibility, have to be demolished. Bradford could do well to start with its regeneration function.

D A Moncaster, Fyfe Grove, Baildon