SIR - Some years ago Bradford Council had laid down Customer Service Standards which were also displayed in the annual Rates Leaflet. These, quite rightly, included such things as expecting 96per cent of letters to be answered within five working days. Eventually these Standards were removed from the Leaflet, supposedly due to lack of space.

More recently I have asked for these Standards to be included once again but without success. Indeed, they are no longer published at all, which is totally unacceptable in my view.

I was told over 12 months ago that the Standards were being updated, and would be published on the Council Website in due course. Despite the lapse of time it seems that the Council is no further forward in this regard.

Considering that ratepayers surely have a right to have these Standards in place for all to see, that there has been no apparent progress on this matter sums up this useless Council once again.

Whilst I have been in contact with Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe on this matter she has ignored all emails asking politely for updates, to such an extent that I felt obliged to submit a formal complaint.

The response was that the complaint was not valid under the Council's Member Complaint Procedure as "failure to respond to a request from a constituent is not a valid reason".

So, councillors are within their rights to ignore reasonable correspondence from citizens. We deserve so much better from our Council. Council Service Standards should be important and need to be published for all to see within a short space of time. It is not rocket science, surely?

Bob Watson, Springfield Road, Baildon