Madam,

Your front-page story (last week’s Cambrian News, ‘Park and Ride axed after secret talks) was, to say the least, an ‘attention getter’. At a time when many towns and cities are promoting their park and ride service, the wise ones within Ceredigion Council decide to close ours down.I understand that this is part of the PwC budget consultation. Like most consultation documents, this seems to advocate cuts to services (even though we have had council tax increases). Did the consultation document include any recommendations regarding staffing levels at the council? If Ceredigion Council is abdicating its responsibilities to an outside body, do we need as many people within the council? It is a case of less for more. Reading the story in the Cambrian News it appears that councillors, apart from Cabinet member Cllr Alun Williams, knew nothing of the decision to end the park and ride scheme. This is of course disgraceful. We also read in the same edition of the Cambrian News a story about the spiralling costs of the skateboard park. Is the £500,000 (and rising) skateboard park more of a priority than the park and ride? How much of ratepayers’ money has been spent on the new bandstand?

It was mentioned in the story that it is “anticipated that the new car park in Mill Street will change the parking dynamics significantly in and around the town”. Will it? My understanding is that this car park will be mainly for Tesco and M&S shoppers and short stay. Cllr Williams says that “older people who wish to travel to Bronglais from the car park will still be able to do so free of charge using their bus pass”. Apart from being patronising can he tell the “older people” which bus passes the hospital entrance?

If the council wants to save money, how about cutting a complete layer of management and cutting the number of councillors in the county. The population of Ceredigion is about 76,000, we have 42 councillors. That means one councillor per 1,810 people. Surely they can cope with more residents than that? A third of the councillors could be cut with no change to the running of Ceredigion. That really would be an ‘attention getter’.

Yours etc

Chris Samuel

William Street

Aberystwyth.