Dear Editor,

Earlier today I had the necessary work done to my phone system to make my landline ready for the big switch off of landlines served by copper cable, not fibre, on January 1, 2027.

It all began with my provider sending me an email asking me to contact them and arrange a time and date when this work could be done, as all providers are required to do. All the benefits were explained. It was emphasised that I was not obliged to do anything, apart from be here when the work is carried out. I could choose to pay for an engineer to come and install the new router and phone adapters for me, but there is the option of doing it yourself if you so wish. The required parts were delivered in plenty of time. Then, 2 days before this was all due to happen, I had an email purporting to come from Openreach saying their engineer would be with me the following day i.e. the day before the change was scheduled to take place. This had not been mentioned to me in any earlier dealings with my service provider. I was going out almost immediately after reading this email and would be away from home until the evening before the planned switch-over. I found time to contact Openreach via their website to cancel their engineer's visit and did not take up the offer to re-schedule a visit straight away.

How fortunate that I had not acted on the email from 'Openreach'. I found the video in their email about having to have work done which entailed drilling through a wall in the property and installing some sort of box, and lots of other intrusive work quite worrying. It turned out that this is absolutely not true and totally unnecessary. When the engineer came to alter my system, he was able to do it without any further work. He simply installed the new router and put in the adapters.

I hope that reading this letter will prevent anyone from being conned by unscrupulous rogues.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Raybould

Dear Editor,

I totally agree with Isabel Ward, what is the point of building thousands of new houses if there are no amenities to go with them? I applaud the idea of building a doctor’s surgery at Cades Farm, but who is going to staff it? It apparently costs in the region of £230,000 to train a doctor, and what young person wants to start life saddled with that amount of debt?

The same with schools, new Primaries are being built, but what happens then? I imagine the imposing of Vat on private schools has meant the parents who might have considered private education now will apply to already crowded State schools.

Lets bring back into use the thousand of houses/ flats left empty (I know of several) before further despoiling our countryside by building more.

Sincerely,

Anne Sparkes

Dear Editor,

I share the editorial writer's concern last week about the rapid growth of Wellington's stock of housing without adequate public consultation. I was, though, disappointed to read the assertion that somehow Somerset Council was in fine fettle until the Liberal Democrats were elected to office at County Hall when the writer claims the new administration set Somerset Council on the road to bankruptcy.

Less than three months ago in your paper, via the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), you published a piece detailing a report by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). The report highlighted the weak business case and poor decision-making behind the creation of Somerset Council while Conservative administrations were at County Hall and also Westminster. The UK government held a public consultation in 2021 on proposals to reform local government in Somerset. Cllr David Fothergill and his Conservative administration at County Hall promoted the single unitary authority for the whole of Somerset called "One Somerset" and the four district authorities proposed two separate unitary authorities called "Stronger Somerset". The two-unitary Stronger Somerset model was supported by 61 per cent of respondents. Just 29 per cent supported the One Somerset proposal. Despite this the Conservative government decided to ignore the consultation process altogether and imposed the single unitary authority model on us. The CIPFA report highlighted significant weaknesses in the business case for the One Somerset option and a string of bad decisions in the run up to 'vesting day'. It concluded that a significant proportion of the current council's budgetary woes had been caused by the former Conservative administration's decision to freeze council tax for six consecutive years from 2010, a decision that would lead to funding shortfalls in each future year, in perpetuity. So, it's a situation made by Conservatives that they need to own.

Further, central government funding for councils fell by about 46 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2020 under the Conservatives while councils were having to continue to fulfil their statutory, legal duties in education, children's services, adult social care, housing, planning and development control, environmental services, public health, highways and transport, community safety and licensing etcetera. Conservatives and now, it seems, Reform UK expect local government to be able to run on "empty".

I belong to no political party and hold no brief for the Lib Dems but the carping tone of your editorial seems to be consistent with the current trend for conspiratorial polemic posing as fact. Sorry, but I don't buy it. I hope for better in future.

Tim Lomas

Owen Street, Wellington