Littering creates the issues of safe picks

Your story about the litter pick that we, at Canterbury City Council, felt unable to support misses a fundamental point (Litter Pick Banned For Being Too Dangerous, Gazette, March 30).

Litter picks would not be needed if people did not drop litter or throw it out of their car windows in the first place. They are the ones that deserve our ire.

We echo the sentiments contained in a recent Gazette Comment (March 9) that said: “The world is divided into two types of people: those who create litter, nuisance, inconvenience, headaches for others and those who clean up after them.”

We have supported dozens of litter picks in recent months including the one featured 22 pages later in the same edition of the paper (Volunteers’ Tidy Piece Of Teamwork) and those you published at the start of the month (We’re Cleaning Up The City/cleaner Future In Store For City, Gazette, March 9).

This time around we had genuine concerns about keeping people safe where cars have been known to ignore the speed limit and there are parked cars to hide litter pickers from view.

Whenever our actions prompt criticism, we review our procedures and we will do so again. Our aim is to find ways to help the community.

In the coming weeks we will recruit 11 enforcement officers who will have a wide range of powers, including catching those who do not use a bin.

We are also pursuing a number of people through the courts.

Littering costs council taxpayers’ money and diminishes people’s quality of life.

That is why they feel the need to don a high-visibility jacket, grab a grabber and do something about it, or we have to divert our resources. Velia Coffey Deputy chief executive, Canterbury City Council, Military Road, Canterbury

With regard to your report of the Wickhambreaux litter pick being banned (Gazette, March 30), I suggest that the council health and safety chiefs take a look at the HSE’S own website where it clearly says: “We want to make clear that ‘health and safety’ is about managing real risks properly, not being risk averse and stopping people getting on with their lives.”

Those interested in reading more thoroughly sensible advice might like to look at http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/ myth-busting.htm Harry Macdonald Churchill Road, Canterbury

No, it was not a Gazette April fool’s joke and I can sympathise completely with the villagers who want to clear the litter from their surrounding roads.

I collect litter from Hambrook Marshes, but when I notified the council that I was also picking up litter from their roads and footpaths at the entrances to the Marsh, I was sent a load of what we used to call ‘bumf’, that I had to agree to and sign, before I received the council’s official blessing.

I’m afraid I just sent it all back, assuring them that, as an octogenarian volunteer, who had survived the bombing and V weapons in the last war, I was quite capable of being responsible for my own actions and, if I did have an accident, the last thing I would do would be to blame it on the council!

I use my own equipment and obtain spare bags from the helpful Serco litter bin collection vans operators, depositing full bags next to their collection points.

Incidentally, when I went to Haywards Heath in West Sussex recently, and drove across the county to Petworth House, I noticed there was no litter along any of their roads, so some councils have cracked the roadside litter problem.

Perhaps if our local councils had less staff sending out edicts and piles of paper they, too, could afford to employ more people to collect the litter that desecrates Kent roads. I would suggest they start with both sides of the A2, from the end of the M2 at Brenley Corner to the Canterbury turning, which at present resembles one continuous rubbish tip. Mike Armstrong Queens Avenue, Canterbury

It’s fashionable for some to sneer at Health and Safety. Imagine the outcry if a council-supported litter-picker was injured or killed by a vehicle. Possibly driven by a follower of Terry Hudson, exercising the right to drive at the speed limit. Marshall Eagle Claremont Place, Canterbury

I never cease to be surprised by the arrogant and selfish nimbyism displayed by the South Canterbury residents opposed to the Mountview Park development (letters, March 23).

No one relishes the prospect of largescale housing developments across the Canterbury district. In an ideal world maybe collaboration between the East Kent authorities would have resulted in proposals for a new town, or other extensive developments outside existing communities. But we are where we are.

South Canterbury is facing the prospect of 4,000 new houses, and I cannot see what is special about that area which should protect it from development.

Other parts of the Canterbury district face an even larger burden. The communities to the east and north of the city are to have over 5,000 new houses (Broad Oak and Sturry 1,150; Hersden 1,200; Herne, Herne Bay and Strode Farm 3,000). All these developments will generate traffic travelling to and from Canterbury, which will have to negotiate the congested Sturry Railway Crossing and the Sturry Road into the city.

We are not being offered special bus services or free bikes to improve our situation.

In addition to the 15-year target for housing the council has to show that sufficient housing will meet demand in the first five years. Any delays at Mountview Park will push that burden onto other areas which already feel abandoned by the City Council. Alan Holden Chairman, Broad Oak Preservation Society, Mayton Lane, Canterbury

I enjoyed reading the thoughtful Harry Bell piece last week.

It is legitimate to draw attention to the overall link between housing development and the pressure of population expansion.

It is, moreover, right to point out the irony of any entreaty to central government to review planning consent, given the Department for Communities and Local Government is the very source of the requirement that councils enable an increased supply of housing. (I note, though, that the government does have the power to force neighbouring district councils to co-operate in allocating sites for housing and could mandate a new Manston Garden City or, indeed, a massive expansion of the already permitted Ebbsfleet Garden City).

On the other hand it is wrong to infer that anyone in Canterbury supporting the application for judicial review related to Mountfield Park must “want to stop homes for other people being built”. This Harry Bell inference overlooks the nature of the arguments being raised before the court.

The objective is not to stop the construction of dwellings for the people of Canterbury and of Kent more broadly. It is rather to oblige the developer and the city council to do the right thing.

Neither has properly assessed traffic impact, air quality effects nor damage to the setting of our World Heritage Site. In these respects the developer still could offer more concessions and more funding, while the council could be more robust in requiring concessions, more realistic in its avowed dedication to sustainability by revising its transport strategy (in co-operation with Kent County Council), more proactive in advancing an air