FOR the avoidance of the doubt that Councillor Waterhouse may have aroused (Letters, February 10) by his carefully shortened quotation from the story in your paper on January 27, Tavistock Town Council has no intention of maintaining next year's very high precept in future years. No-one has ever said otherwise.

A private company, in a situaI WAS very disappointed by the comments attributed to local councillors in Alan Gregory's report last week entitled 'Torrent of anger over flood bills' and disappointed that South West Water was not given the opportunity to comment.

The article referred to some emergency repair work that was carried out by South West Water and our contractors to a culvert in Callington Road, Tavistock. The culvert is part of the area's land drainage system and, as a result of damage, severe flooding problems were experienced by local residents over the Christmas and New Year period.

Rather than wait and debate who is responsible for the watercourse system and leave local residents with more anxiety, South West Water agreed with West Devon Borough Council that we should investigate where the damage was and carry out a repair as quickly as possible.

The repair was particularly difficult and took several weeks to complete.

Being part of the land drainage system the culvert in question is not part of South West Water's sewerage system. The comments in the article imply that the company is disputing responsibility for a system that it had previously had responsibility for. This is not the case. South West Water has not had responsibility for watercourses in the past and does not have now.

However, we were only too pleased to help the situation caused by the damage to the watercourse culvert and hope that the matter of responsibility can be resolved as soon as possible. We were, frankly, astonished to be criticised for a situation where we were simply trying to help the community out of a problem.

Peter Briens

Operations and

engineering director

South West Watertion similar to the council's, would be able to fund the expensive business of arbitration by borrowing against the value of its freeholds. A council is prevented by law from doing so.

This is why we have to look to the council taxpayer. Tavistock's ratepayers, community charge payers and council tax payers have benefited greatly during the last century from the income generated by the council's freeholds. They will do so again in this century.

For this one year, the council has had to set an unusually large tax precept to preserve this benefit for Tavistock's taxpayers in the future.

Your readers elected councillors to make these sorts of unpalatable decisions on behalf of us all. With the exception of one who abstained on the vote, the council has been united in this decision. Your readers may think that this speaks for itself.

R W Mathew

Mayor of Tavistock

THE two subjects — 'unwarranted burden for borough ratepayers' and 'the square is in need of enhancement' seemed to me not unrelated.

The electorate vote for the representatives necessary to make sensible expenditure decision on their behalf. Building patios outside the town hall was not a sensible expenditure decision when there was a known possible debt in the form of hefty legal fees.

Would it be too much to ask that these representatives return to basics? ie give priority to all necessary expenditure. If we run out of money before someone's pet project can be done then hard luck pet project! That's sensible decision making.

As for the problems concerning Tavistock property, where is the town council contingency fund? Why did Tavistock pursue such expensive litigation if there was no money to pay for it? What will be the outcome if Tavistock wins the litigation? Will all the work by done again?

In other words, where is tI WAS very disappointed by the comments attributed to local councillors in Alan Gregory's report last week entitled 'Torrent of anger over flood bills' and disappointed that South West Water was not given the opportunity to comment.

The article referred to some emergency repair work that was carried out by South West Water and our contractors to a culvert in Callington Road, Tavistock. The culvert is part of the area's land drainage system and, as a result of damage, severe flooding problems were experienced by local residents over the Christmas and New Year period.

Rather than wait and debate who is responsible for the watercourse system and leave local residents with more anxiety, South West Water agreed with West Devon Borough Council that we should investigate where the damage was and carry out a repair as quickly as possible.

The repair was particularly difficult and took several weeks to complete.

Being part of the land drainage system the culvert in question is not part of South West Water's sewerage system. The comments in the article imply that the company is disputing responsibility for a system that it had previously had responsibility for. This is not the case. South West Water has not had responsibility for watercourses in the past and does not have now.

However, we were only too pleased to help the situation caused by the damage to the watercourse culvert and hope that the matter of responsibility can be resolved as soon as possible. We were, frankly, astonished to be criticised for a situation where we were simply trying to help the community out of a problem.

Peter Briens

Operations and

engineering director

South West Waterhis problem going? We are paying for it we need to know.

R Crispin

Midella Road

Yelverton