SIR – Notwithstanding the city centre redevelopment fiasco, Bradford Council is much better than many other local authorities in two important respects.

Firstly, if you contact the Council by telephone with a query or enquiry, you will not be answered by a computer-generated, stacked-menu, anti-customer defence system.

Instead, a real person will quickly connect you to whoever is qualified to handle your enquiry. How much better and quicker than the ubiquitous and odious computer requiring you repeatedly, ad nauseam, to choose one of three, four, five or even six alternative buttons.

Full marks to Bradford Council for retaining the human touch.

Secondly, many local authorities have resorted to an assortment of money-grubbing rackets associated with wheelie bins, including fines for putting them out “too early” or on the “wrong day”, and have sought to enhance the odoriferous qualities of the air breathed by their citizens and ensure that the local urban foxes and rats do not go hungry, by emptying their wheelie bins only every two weeks.

Full marks again to Bradford Council for eschewing this inexcusable degradation of service and continuing to collect domestic garbage weekly without hassle. Noel A Shaw, Bronte Old Road, Thornton