SIR - Bradford corporation used to own all the public services. Our waterworks, based on Anthony Gadies reservoirs, the coal gas works up Back Lane, the electricity generating plant on Canal Road and the only profitable sewage plant in the country at Esholt.

All these services used the Bradford roads as a convenience for distributing their services and as they were all owned by the citizens of Bradford it was not necessary to make any distribution charge However now all these services are owned by private companies , often foreign-based and they apparently have been allowed the right to use our roads to distribute their services free of charge to enhance their considerable profits.

Not only that, but each repair and renewal, especially with regard to British Gas, is contracted out to different companies that each perform only a portion of the work to their most cost-effective timescale, with scant regard to the cost to the community of the lane closures and congestion.

Work carried out locally has taken four weeks; when, if each process had been done consecutively, could have been done in four days.

Where is Bradford’s big stick and why are we not using it ?

John Pashley, Westcliffe Avenue, Baildon