Readers' letters - January 17

What a fantastic result by a BBC team.

The programme, Fighting for Air, 9-10pm on Wednesday night, showed that trees can reduce air pollution for pedestrians and schoolchildren by as much as 30 per cent.

Pollution was reduced by a range of methods, from streamlining traffic sequencing to more green vegetation lining the streets.

Let’s build on the announcement of a new Northern Forest that will spread from Leeds to Liverpool.

It aims to replace the bulldozing of trees by the planned HS2.

Let’s plant thousands of oak saplings and ash, to replace the trees lost to ash dieback.

N Bywater

Via email

I love trees, and forests.

News of the so-called Northern Forest should fill me with joy then, right?

Wrong!

A primeval forest in the making, it is not...

Saplings will be rammed on to wasteland on the edge of motorways and on roundabouts. Whips will be squashed on the sides of shopping centre car parks and at junctions. Many of them will be vandalised and choked by fumes and litter.

Others will probably die off in a few decades’ time when this ‘initiative’ is forgotten. Hardly something that will fill us with wonder.

I suspect the real reason for the Northern Forest is somewhat more similar.

It is a ruse to allow rural development to take place more easily – particularly fracking.

Much more green field development could be permitted as long as the developer offsets his encroachment into the country by buying a few scrawny trees for a section of hard shoulder.

After all, when was the last time a Government, especially this insidious collection of political minnows, ever do anything just for the good of the people or the environment.?

What’s the endgame here?

Richard Tandy

Blackpool

For more letters: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/your-say/readers-letters-january-19-1-8968553

funding

Negative impact on our services

It is with great disappointment that Home-Start Lancashire and Cumbria read about the ending of the Central Gateway Fund (LP January 11).

This will have a detrimental impact on many Home-Start services and projects, forcing some areas to reduce their service or worse, close.

Historically, Lancashire County Council and Public Health have supported this service through contracts and funds, providing a small baseline income.

This has been vital for securing additional awards from charitable trusts and foundations, as LCC financial support endorses confidence in the organisation and some stability.

As most beneficiaries and practitioners of third sector support services will know, the ending of this grant will ultimately increase the costs and pressures to universal and statutory services.

More importantly, it will leave many vulnerable families without access to this much needed family support service.

Home-Start Lancashire & Cumbria have been providing a unique volunteer- led family support service across the county for over 26 years and currently serves 11 boroughs.

Last year, in total, 2,464 children and their parents have benefited from the support Home-Start has provided.

We urge the LCC to reconsider ending this financial support and putting at risk services to vulnerable families.

Home-Start Lancashire & Cumbria Consortium

heritage

Save this fine 1930s building

I hope the rest of Chorley will join me in utterly condemning the decision of Chorley Council to demolish the Royal Oak building in the town centre to “build a car park”.

It’s a fine building dating from the 1930s and could easily be re-opened as a hotel and a pub with shops.

Some of the decisions of our council simply defy belief.

I promise I will do my bit to prevent this happening.

In fact I will take a page out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and do my Arthur Dent impression by wearing my pyjamas and dressing gown and lie in front of the bulldozer if the worst comes to the worst.

Paul Tate

Chorley

nhs

Brexiteers’

NHS promises

Theresa May, in her hurried visit to meet the newly elected President in 2017, obviously left without his advice on how to deal with

the type of current crisis she faces regarding the NHS.

Just claim it is fake news!

Or is she hoping that those arch Brexiteers, of Farage, Gove and Johnson, will rescue her in a year’s time when the health service coffers are filled with the promises they made that will resolve the situation?

Denis Lee

Ashton

nhs

We need 24/7 A&E service

Re: A&E at Chorley Hospital. I was there this morning with my father who had fallen.

My father was seen and treated quite quickly.

What a shame this service is not avoidable 24/7.

This would surely keep the strain off the Royal Preston Hospital.

M E Mather

via email