Poor excuse over snow

Dear Editor, Another winter and another year of excuses from North Lanarkshire Council.

They have been following the same plan for years now and seem to learn nothing from previous experiences.

Their insistence on focusing on defined core areas, such as main roads and routes to schools, has endured another year of failure with main roads blocked and schools closed.

As usual, the villages fared worst with pavements not gritted, roads not cleared and rubbish not collected.

I have to ask myself, how long the people of North Lanarkshire are willing to put up with such mediocrity?

[Council leader] Jim Logue stated that“we do not have the resources to grit every street and pavement”. Why? There is money available.

Only a few pages away in the Advertiser, Councillor Paul Di Mascio is organising a community fun day for the people of Chapelhall to decide how to spend a grant from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

Why not use that to provide dedicated snow clearance equipment for their village instead of frittering it away on flowers and a bit of paint?

Why not use community benefit fund money from the many windfarms around North Lanarkshire to ensure that in future all its villages have stocks of grit and snow clearance equipment so that they need never be abandoned because they aren’t on the main routes?

North Lanarkshire Council is a perfect example of why in general Scottish local authorities are failing; they are too big and too remote.

Wouldn’t an Airdrie & District Council be far better placed to engage, involve and empower communities? Can you imagine a situation where our councillors, as community leaders, actually got out there with grit and shovels? Under the present top-down system. I can’t. James Cassidy Address supplied