Tom Keen, of Tor View Avenue, Newton Abbot, writes:

Whenever I hear the word 'infrastructure', spoken by national or local politicians, I groan.

They use the word about new roads, bypasses, flyovers, railway lines, fibre-optic cables etc.

Then I look out of my window at the patched, cracked and crumbling road surface. If I leave the house, I walk on weed-infested, crazy pavements or muddy, unmaintained grass verges.

The streets, pavements and alleyways in my neighbourhood are a disgrace to this country. They would not be out of place in many impoverished or under-developed states.

This is what 'infrastructure' means to me.

The county council budget for road maintenance is squeezed by all kinds of other welfare, social and recreational duties and service preferences. Now, we aren't all old; we aren't all young; we don't all have families; we don't all cycle or hang-glide; we aren't all disabled; we don't all have gender issues. However, we all depend on streets, roads and pavements, either to get around on, or to enable the delivery of other services to our doorsteps.

The real, decaying infrastructure upon and around which we live our lives should be the number one priority of our councils, not all of our various minority needs. Without a decent environment, all other services suffer. Our sense of well-being is constantly undermined by the ugliness and increasing dereliction surrounding us.

The county council has the budget and the responsibility for all road repairs, maintenance and renewal. Why? Local streets, alleyways, verges and pavements should be under the auspices of the council closest to their residents – towns and parishes.

Let the county deal with major routes, trunk roads etc, and let local people be responsible for their own locality.

We aren't allowed to organise our own street repairs – only the county and district can do that, yet they choose not to. They seem to prefer to spend billions on destroying our beautiful town with mega-estates and flyovers.

We deserve better returns on our council tax than this.

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