Thank you for devoting space in last week's Gazette to the threat of lighting by the county council of the canal towpath.

It seems that the proposal goes back to 2000, when the Local Transport Plan was being developed to include a shopping list of 'sustainable' transport measures to service the new housing allocations on the London Road. It may have been overlooked at the time, in the debate about the more eye-catching ones, like cycle lanes.

Having been sidelined for five years, it looks very much as if a budget needed to be spent before April this year. Such is the illogicality of the funding framework that the £50,000 concerned cannot be spent on more important matters, like mending the roads.

And such is the urgency to get rid of the £50,000 that the county council did not find it possible to discuss it with the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Kennet and Avon Trust, the Green Movement, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, the Anglers' Association, the district council, the town council, or even British Waterways, whose canal it is.

Local views among Victoria Road residents seem divided, with some disliking the whole idea, and others more relaxed about the scheme, provided that the columns are lower and more traditional, and casting less obtrusive pools of light. I suspect that some official standard of footway lighting will rule this out.

My view is that to spend £50,000 on this item when council tax payers are under such pressure, is a travesty of priorities, and that Wiltshire should be more sensitive to this when considering such schemes.

J Ody

The Trust for Devizes