IT started with a smile, as the song goes. A promise that this would be an improved service. No, of course, you will not be losing anything. In fact, things can only get better (in the words of another song).

However, we've seen and heard it all before with the withdrawal of a manned police station, the cutbacks at the fire station and the bid to close the Coronation Hospital - all in the last few years. Now it appears that the town's Environmental Health services are under threat.

The dreaded words have already been uttered by Bradford Council - 'rationalisation', 'relocation', restructuring'. The one word they don't mention when it comes to services is 'reduction'. But that is invariably the outcome when offices are closed and service bases are moved away. Parish Clerk Miggy Bailey is right to raise the issue now (see Page 15), even though Bradford Council maintains that no decision has yet been taken on the future of the Environmental Health team at the Town Hall.

Anyone like to bet? We suspect someone has let the cat out of the bag and it must be long odds-on that Ilkley is to lose yet another community service in the near future.

We agree entirely with Mrs Bailey when she says that every service that is moved away means that the people are represented less and less locally, and their ability to contact local authority officers is reduced.

It appears to us that those in authority care less and less about the community and the ethos of providing the best possible service locally. As each service is reduced, Ilkley becomes less a self-contained town in its own right and more a suburb of the city.

The decision-makers can recite their three 'Rs' for all they are worth, but experience has shown that, far from services being improved or even maintained, things can only get worse.