ONE feels that Ivor Pumfrey, the man we pay to manage our refuse collection, protests too much.

Any organisation which increases a crucial element – diesel – of its costs by nearly 35 per cent in one year with the increase alone being 2.5 per cent of the environmental services budget has to be subject to questioning.

Furthermore, the department has a surplus of 3,000 wheelie bins which he says enabled him to get a discount on the total purchase. This sounds very like the offer supermarkets make when an extra tin of baked beans gives you 10 per cent off – you end up hoping your extra purchase will be useful in the future.

Furthermore he has vehicles unsuitable for the Malvern roads – a new refuse lorry which finds it very difficult to turn in the space allowed in some of our roads and another new small lorry costing tens of thousands of pounds which goes to a couple of roads collecting bags in West Malvern but then spends an hour taking these bags to a site in Norton and then back again. This has to be inefficient.

Our dustmen do an excellent job in all weathers and handling all the rubbish we throw out but as for the management I have my doubts.

MARK STARR Leigh Sinton