SIR – I have read with alarm, as a person who has carers coming into my flat three times a day, the proposal to increase the charges. I am already paying approximately the same amount a week as I receive in state pension.

I am considered having the means to pay because I sold the property where I lived and owned and paid the sale value into the bank preparatory to buying another, and in the meantime rented a flat.

I would have been better off if I had not sold the property I owned. This is what I have done many times over the years. I am now 81.

If I had known what the future was to be with a Shylock-type council, I would have never sold.

Bernard P J Crowe, Brentwood Gardens, Bradford