Letters - May 14, 2018

In reply to the letter by Linda Wright regarding the residents of Lindsay Court (Your Say, May 3) she says she is in a flat of one block of 16. Lindsay Court has 11 blocks totalling 96 flats, so it is on an entirely different scale.

She obviously does not know the true facts which have caused this estate to get into the poor state it is today.

My husband bought our flat 39 years ago.

He has always paid the maintenance charge regularly. Obviously, the charges have increased over the years. She says she pays £72.50 per month, at present we pay £83 per month, so we are not exactly expecting repairs for nothing.

Through no fault of the residents, the main reason Lindsay Court flats have got into this state is because of a Manchester-based management company we had for approximately 30 years. Any repairs they did (which were very few) were just cheap patch up jobs. Many residents have tried to make improvements themselves, but there is a limit as to what they can do, such as roof repairs etc.

Mrs Wright’s suggestion to sign our flats over to someone who can afford to repair them is ridiculous.

When you have bought a property with your hard earned money, it is not feasible to just give it up and start paying rent.

That is what we paid the maintenance charge for.

I wonder if she would be happy to pay nearly £30,000 on top of what she has paid in maintenance over the years.

So Mrs Wright, please get your facts right before you start accusing people of begging for charity from the council.

Sue Taylor

Lindsay Court
St Annes

FOOTPATH

Residents parking could be answer

I read with interest about the lady who wrote about parking on the footpath.

We have to do the same, otherwise cars would struggle to get down the road. We have a big van that advertises pies and peas also their own private cars, two work vans further up, as well as their own private cars.

If you ask them to move up to get your own car in you just get a load of abuse.

Courtesy has apparently now gone.

Resident parking could be the answer.

Name supplied

South Shore

POLLUTION

Why Westminster targets road users

Concerns by some at Westminster over the targeting of only road vehicles - cars, vans, buses and HGVs - as the main cause of air pollution are well founded.

The reality is that many more devices not subject to any statutory controls or testing are creating emissions.

These include railway locomotives, construction machinery, heating and cooking appliances, diesel generators supplying the National Grid at peak demand, plus of course jet aircraft, the most polluting of all! The real reason for declining air quality is excessive human activity, contributed to by over-population.

Not many years ago,shops and offices had limited opening hours – not on Sundays as today. Pubs shut at 10pm and there were only a few other leisure venues, for example, cinemas or theatres. Today we have 24/7 mayhem as thousands of journeys are taken daily to casinos,and so on. Tourism is now also identified as a major cause of pollution, with trivial low cost air travel a major factor.

Sadly motor vehicles are the only group subject to either regulation or taxes thus making them an easy target for politicians who have themselves created today’s problems in various ways over the years.

DS Boyes

via email

Politics

Base letters on facts not bias

Dr Barry Clayton says that Labour’s performance in the recent local elections “was woeful” (Your Say, May 10).

The factual results in the last election were that the Labour Party won a total of 2,350 seats while the Tory Party won a total of only 1,332 seats.

Labour won control of 74 councils while the Conservatives obtained control over only 46. The Tories won only seven out of 32 London borough councils and now control only one out of 36 metropolitan district councils. Letters based on facts rather than on personal and media bias would be appreciated.

Alan Johnson

Fleetwood

SOCIETY

£10,000 payment just a gimmick

Re: £10,000 payment for 25-year-olds. Rather than giving a free handout of £10,000 to young people (a gimmick for votes if ever I heard one), why not lower private rents, increase the amount of affordable social housing, boost the number of decent job opportunities and abolish zero hour contracts?

Molly Clare

via email