THIS is to add my perspective to the letter from Cllr Eberlie in the Times (April 15). having done some digging into recent council tax increases, Cllr Eberlie and his colleagues have my sympathy in trying to reconcile what must be almost unreconcilable.

It is evident that Central Government is the major culprit in causing Council Tax to drive our costs up way above inflation. Grants from Central Government have been reduced and controls over how money is spent plus bureaucracy have increased.

The remedy is to vote them out. We can all contribute to this within the next year or so.

Secondly, we need to ensure that our representative in Westminster is a strong local MP and a member of a changed government. This too is in our hands.

The same applies to borough and county councillors — we suffer from hung organisations. We should give the Cllr Eberlies of the world full power to manage our affairs on our behalf.

We also have an opportunity on June 10 to avoid more bureaucracy from the EU. We should also keep pushing for a referendum on the proposed EU constitution. We can all influence this.

We can also look closer to home. For example, my council tax charge is up 36% in three years. The policing element indexes 183 for 04/05 versus an 01/02 base 100. this is a rise of 83%! On reading the 76 page annual policing plan, it is unclear why we should be enduring such increases. It is also not clear to me how such increases get approval by local elected representatives.

Not only have we seen a huge rise in costs, but we can expect more — it appears, for example, that the police wish to recruit a further 212 officers to reach target 3,500. If we assume a fully fringed cost of £40,000 per officer we have about another £8.5 million or so to go. We are seeing breakthrough costs for incremental change — for example, the police target to detect 19% of domestic burglaries. So is it OK that over four out of five go undetected?

In conclusion, getting steamed up about changes in car park charges should, in my view, be set in context. Whilst it is good fun to have petitions, the real problem starts in Westminster and that is where we need to work at getting change.

As far as car park charges are concerned, one remedy is to reduce the amount of time spent in Tavistock. Let's get change at the top first.

C D Park

Westlake Farm House

Lifton