walking from the Post Office towards LloydsTSB bank yesterday, along the pavement, outside the Pretty Raj Indian restaurant, I espied a new inspection/junction box cover. The lovely paving stones had been ripped up to enable a new cable, I should think, to be laid there to a point back towards the Post Office. Right down the middle of the pavement! What’s wrong with that, you may ask? Well, instead of relaying the paving stones, which had been painstakingly laid by an earlier council, at goodness knows what cost to us council taxpayers, the telecom company had poured in black asphalt, which now lies like a black snake all along the middle of said stretch of paving. An absolute eyesore that drew my attention to it by its awfulness! After that, I noticed many more of these money-saving, quick-fix repairs after work had been carried out, round all sorts of companies’ covers. Workman Bridge in particular. Some bigger and uglier than others.

My query is, what right has a company to dig up paved areas, paid for by us ratepayers, and not repair like for like, while committing this vandalism in our town’s midst? Doesn’t anybody care? Do we have no right to expect our pavements, etc, to be returned to original condition after such work?

I understand the reason, cheapness, of course, for the perpetrators. We worry, rightly so, about chopping down trees in our town (well done, those people).

What do Coun John Smith and Wychsvon councillor Andy Dyke feel/think about this desecration of our public footpaths, and of hard-earned public money being thrown onto a skip? Aesthetic paths turned into eyesores.

Do we not have any recourse? I think it’s disgusting that companies can get away with acts like this. Are there rules regarding pavement repairs that aren’t being adhered to, and if there are, why not? If there aren’t any, then why not? Does the buck stop anywhere? Jim Curry, Port Street, Evesham