LIKE many other people in Herefordshire I am alarmed at the increasing spectacle of our once lovely county looking so bad as the lack of grass cutting gradually makes the entire county look like an abandoned and uncared for place.

I understand the need to reduce costs, but I do not see the logic in not cutting the grass. When it is eventually cut it will require specialist cutting equipment rather than lawnmowers, and the cuttings will need to be collected in order to prevent them becoming a potential public health hazard through rotting and attracting vermin.

I narrowly missed a walker on the road between Chance's Pitch and the Eastnor turn the other day because they were walking at the edge of the road, where the tall grass now waves into the road itself.

It is unsafe to leave the roadside verges uncut for so long.

I've seen playing fields on Martins Way/Biddulph Way look like a jungle.

I doubt whether the approval for the reduction in grass cutting would have gone ahead had it been phrased as 'closure of council owned playing fields'.

That is in effect what has happened (with the exception of the main recreation ground that is earmarked for potential retail development – another battle).

Dog walkers too will have seen many of their routes reduced to an overgrown jungle.

The savings being achieved through the reduction in grass cutting are, we're told, being redirected to road maintainence. But the Homend, Top Cross, High Street, the upper part of Biddulph Way, and many of our pavements remain in a very poor state.

Moreover, the price we're all paying for the reduction in grass cutting is having a much bigger, negative, impact than most would have ever thought: it is seriously damaging the relationship between the local authority and the householders whom they serve. Herefordshire Council, please take this as an open letter to rethink the strategy of reducing grass cutting and look again at the policy.

Edd Hogan

Ledbury