A public service is flushed away

One must question this decision, especially if it was based on financial merits only. With 750,000 visitors potentially wishing to spend a penny surely it makes economic sense to rebuild them. A ten pence charge per visit would almost warrant a full time post in summer to keep them spotlessly clean and tidy.

We could offer the finest loos in the Dales, but unfortunately no-one at Craven District Council has the vision or the intellect to understand the pressures faced by this tiny community.

In an age where tourism is king, what does CDC do? Retreat back to the centre, pull out of providing any form of service to the region's tourist attractions and to delegate any form of responsibility to the local community or the national park.

In fact, their record in Malham is a scandal. The dog waste bin was removed because it was being abused (it couldn't cope with the volume). So what happens now? Dog owners leave putrid plastic bags stuffed into the dry stone walls and under hedges. Litter is dumped everywhere, but CDC are not prepared to empty our new bins on a daily basis at peak times.

It may be a long and winding road from Gargrave, but this shouldn't be an excuse not to cater for the visitors who contribute so much to the region's economy.

Wake up CDC, do something now and fulfil your responsibilities!

Graham Wade,

Malham.

SIR - In response to your leader article of April 14 regarding police force amalgamation, it is important to note that North Yorkshire Police Authority did not vote unanimously for amalgamation; indeed, three of those who voted against are from the Western Area (Craven, Harrogate, and Richmondshire).

Secondly, the agreement is not binding if the conditions laid down by the authority are not met by the Home Office. The conditions NYPA has laid down go much further than representation, they include finance and budgets.

North Yorkshire Police Authority, as well as the three other forces in the region, has been given four months by the Home Office for further consultation.

I urge readers to write to the authority, your local district and county councillors, as well as your MP if you feel strongly about the way in which a large strategic force is being proposed.

Jean Anderson

Independent Member,

North Yorkshire Police Authority,

Draughton.

SIR - I read with some dismay the article in last week's Herald about the misdiagnosis of a dog.

My first thought, I must admit, was 'there but for the grace of God go I'.

I have known Tony Turnbull as a mentor and a neighbour in practice for almost 25 years since my student days and a more selfless and dedicated individual it would be difficult to find.

As I understand it the dog in question is well, financial losses have been reimbursed and the party involved has apologised. Whilst we must sympathise with the undoubted anxiety the client must have experienced, one wonders what more could have been done once the error had been identified.

In our profession we see examples of the fallibility of our clients every day; people make mistakes and misjudgements which have welfare implications for their animals. However it goes without saying that we do not then twist the knife and revel in the guilt elicited but try to improve things with compassion and education.

I would hope that some of the very many clients who have benefited from Tony's dedication and expertise over the years might see fit to offer a little support; we are all human after all.

Robin Hargreaves (BVSc. MRCVS),

Stanley House Veterinary Surgeons,

Albert Road, Colne.

SIR - On November 25 last year a notice appeared in the Craven Herald that North Yorkshire County Council proposed to make an order to make Brewery Lane, Skipton, one-way.

On January 6 a further notice appeared in the Craven Herald to the effect that the county council had made an order confirming that Brewery Lane was to become one-way only.

To date nothing has happened so I wrote to Mr Isherwood at North Yorkshire Highways Department, Skipton, on April 4 to ask when the above order would be implemented. I received a letter from his assistant declining to answer this question just confirming that waiting restrictions on Hall Croft, Brook Street and Granville Street would be implemented at some time in the future.

I telephoned on April 10 to ask for an answer to my question about the order for one way traffic through Brewery Lane to be told by a Mr Stuart Marshall that nothing would be done before the Nova development of the Dewhurst Mill had taken place and that if this took more than 18 months from the date of the order (ie January 6) then the order would become null and void.

I have been informed by Nova Homes that they would like Brewery Lane to be closed to all traffic prior to the start of this development in order to facilitate building works.

British Waterways have also expressed their concern at the present volume of traffic using the Brewery Lane bridge. It has become a rat run between Gargrave Road and Broughton Road.

The residents of Hall Croft wish to know who made the decision not to proceed with the aforementioned order and for what reason.

How can we have any faith in NYCC if decisions like this are made without informing the public?

Mrs C Watters,

Hall Croft, Skipton.

SIR - There has been a lot of correspondence in recent weeks about transport in Craven, latterly, a letter outlining the free travel pass system to pensioners which came into force in April.

It is appreciated that North Yorkshire has brought this scheme in earlier than the Government have agreed to. But, as chairman of Scad (Skipton and Craven Action for Disability), I would point out that for people with a problem of mobility or needing wheelchair access this is totally irrelevant.

This section of our community has no access to public transport. The local transport provider (Pennine) does not have wheelchair access despite the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act of October 2004.They have been approached. Free travel is therefore of no benefit to these people.

We live in an age where people are living longer and the numbers of the people in the category which I have defined are increasing too.

Our membership has doubled in two years and we struggle to meet the demands upon our transport service - now five minibuses.

Scad is the only provider of this service and we are a "charity!" having to raise all the funding ourselves.

The shop in Skipton is our lifeline; we can no longer depend upon funds and grants although we have received some funding from Yorkshire Forward to help us with a newly opened shop in Settle.

We have also opened a shop in Keighley. Our transport takes people to hospital and hospice.

Furthermore, over 90 percent of our workforce are volunteers, giving so much to others less fortunate than themselves. Having read all the correspondence I felt it necessary to state these facts.

People with a problem of mobility are being ignored in Craven. Skipton is not "disabled-friendly". This has been stated in your columns by local and visitor personnel.

Only today, in the Settle shop, I was approached to see if we had wheelchair hire.. no shop mobility here!

Elizabeth Gray,

Chairman of Scad,

Newmarket Street, Skipton.

SIR - On behalf of Marie Curie Cancer Care I would like to express my thanks to the volunteers and people of Skipton and Settle who supported our Great Daffodil Appeal during February and March.

The Skipton street collection raised an excellent £680 and the Settle street collection raised a fantastic £394.

The collections could not have been successful without the help of our volunteers who kindly stood, in all weather, giving away the distinctive daffodil pin badges in exchange for a donation.

The money raised will help us maintain our special services through the nurses in the community for cancer patients and their families. All the services we provide are free of charge and we rely heavily on the community we serve for support. Therefore we are most grateful to everyone who supported the campaign this year.

Claire Priestwood,

Community fundraising co-ordinator,

Marie Curie Fundraising Office,

Maudsley Street, Bradford.

SIR - "Every country gets the government it deserves," wrote Joseph de Maistre in 1811.

Which leads me to ask what Craven (in general) and Cowling (in particular) has done to deserve Coun John Alderson?

It seems that Mr Alderson, who in addition to his paid duties as a district councillor also chairs Cowling Parish Council, demands that a Cowling resident seeking legitimate parish council data under the Freedom of Information Act be charged £2,000 per enquiry (Craven Herald, April 14).

Intrigued, I looked up the council minutes to find that Mr Alderson and his fellow public servants had gone that extra mile by also demanding an additional fee "to reimburse the council the costs of all work undertaken at the rate of £150 per hour, with a minimum of five hours charged."

In other words, an additional £750.

In pursuing this outrageous action Coun Alderson was (let us put it kindly) misinformed. As an elected public representative he must (or should) be aware that there is no basis whatsoever in law for such a demand. In certain very unusual circumstances - unlikely to be pertinent in this case - the law permits a maximum fee of £400.

More importantly, Coun Alderson and his associates should be also be aware that Section 16 of the Theft Act of 1968 deems an attempt to "obtain money under false pretences" to be a criminal offence, and this payment demand could be construed as a prima facie case to that effect.

But Coun Alderson is not alone among Craven's arrogant and obfuscationist district councillors. He merely typifies an attitude held by a small but powerful minority of council members.

Consider the case of Coun Polly English, who spoke on January 17 at a meeting of the council's performance and resources committee.

Before voting in favour of a motion to build a number of multi-storey car parks on publicly-owned land in Skipton town centre, Mrs English proclaimed that she had been elected by the the people of Skipton to use her personal judgement in such matters - conveniently ignoring the fact that in a referendum of over 10,000 Skipton residents independently conducted by the Electoral Reform Society, 71.6 per cent of respondents voted against that project.

It is to be hoped that Mrs English's contempt for the views of her electorate will be remembered when she stands for re-election next year. Likewise her husband and deputy council leader Paul English, who also voted in favour of a scheme so roundly rejected by residents of his ward.

Democracy in Craven may be in intensive care. But hopefully it is not yet dead.

Peter Scott-Smith

The Green, Long Preston

SIR - My word, can't you tell its election time and aren't some people panicking? Grasping at any straw in a vain attempt to discredit the opposition.

Now then Coun Crawford (Craven Herald letters April 14) let's have some truth about the bus station at Skipton. As the elected member representing the area of Skipton Bus Station on the County, District, and Town Council's, I am in a position to know exactly what is going on.

Although the land belongs to Craven District Council, it is the responsibility of North Yorkshire County Council and they alone have both to submit the plans for approval and provide the funding for a new bus station.

North Yorkshire County Council is run by a Cabinet of eight elected members. All of them Conservatives and not one of them from the Craven area (the same Cabinet recently axed the Kildwick level crossing improvements from the Local Transport Plan).

Their decisions, on all matters, then come to full council where, wonder of wonders, the 42 Conservative members await them to vote in unison in favour of whatever this select band have decided, (against 31 in total opposition members).

We now come to the Craven area committee of North Yorkshire County Council, which, until last May, for the previous four years at least, were headed by a Conservative chairman and comprised a Conservative majority (this former chairman has come out of retirement now challenging for a district seat in the Aire Valley ward) and during their reign precisely nothing was done about the bus station. Well done the Conservatives!

Last year in May 2005 I was elected to North Yorkshire County Council and became chairman of Craven Area Committee. In September 2005 plans were drawn up and exhibited at the public meeting in the Town Hall, at the behest of North Yorkshire County Council, for consultation. I, myself, stood with the plans and explained them to the public.

It was not until last month at the Craven Area Committee that the bombshell was dropped that the hierarchy at North Yorkshire County Council were withdrawing funding for the project.

My colleagues and I swore at that meeting we would fight tooth and nail for a new bus station and I am pleased to advise you that I have organised an urgent meeting between the chief officer of highways at North Yorkshire, chief officers at Craven District Council and Coun Heseltine and myself on Wednesday to try and forge some agreement on the way forward for the bus station (and I don't mean a lick of paint either).

We will do our utmost but remember, that it is the distant Conservatives at North Yorkshire who make the decisions on the bus station - not the ruling group at Craven District Council, whatever Coun Crawford would have you believe.

County Coun Polly English.

Chairman,

Craven Area Committee,

Burnside Avenue, Skipton.

SIR - In the Craven Herald of Friday April 7, T Hall lamented the loss of democracy and accountability in matters of local government suggesting that despite naming and shaming of the actions of authorities in some cases it appeared to make no difference, it was business as usual and the public appeared to be unable to do anything about it.

More evidence of riding roughshod over public opinion was further commented on in the editorial of the Craven Herald on Friday April 14 with respect to the merger of North Yorkshire Police Authority into a regional Yorkshire-wide body.

It may serve to look how representative democracy has changed at a national level to make some sense of the loss of local representative democracy.

Where has power migrated to? Katharina von Schnurbein, a European Commission spokesman for employment and social affairs, recently stated that the British Parliament can pass any law it likes but those laws have no effect until they have been approved by the EU.

During the last general election the Conservative leader Michael Howard was beating his breast about how his party was going to introduce laws to curb immigration should his party be returned to power only to be reminded by an apparatchik from the EU that it is the EU who will decided these matters, not national parliaments. This puts the legal status of our national parliament into some kind of perspective.

Up to 80 per cent of our laws now emanate from the EU as directives and therefore our national parliament is becoming decorative rather than functional with real power (except for going to war, money supply and tax raising) residing elsewhere.

It may therefore follow that local government cannot escape the new order of things. The Conservatives established Government Offices for the Regions in 1994 and followed it by the Regional Assembly for Yorkshire and Humberside with its Brussels Office to represent its 22 local authorities in 1995. And whilst recognising that no explicit EU directive exists for the regionalisation of England, it is not needed, because a Europe of the Regions is the EU's form of local government as required in the preamble to the Treaty of Rome.

Mr AJA Smith,

Colne Road, Glusburn.

Mr AJA Smith,

Colne Road, Glusburn.