IT was with real dismay that I read last week in the Gazette of North Wiltshire District Council's proposals to introduce wheelie bins throughout the district.

Have our councillors and their officers really given the matter serious thought?

If they go ahead with this scheme then Chippenham and all the other towns and villages of north Wiltshire will soon be perpetually blighted by the terrible eyesore of ugly, dirty wheelie bins on many of our streets, not only on collection day but on every day of the year.

Just go and look at areas of Melksham, Westbury and Trowbridge where the scheme is already running.

I, for one, and many of my neighbours, would then be forced to be part of making Chippenham an unattractive place to live.

I am an OAP and my house on the Marshfield Road, like others, has a flight of steps from the house to the pavement, and no rear entrance.

The only place to permanently park my wheelie bin would be on the pavement of that main road.

Just round the corner in Park Lane there are rows of terraced houses, again with no rear entrance, many occupied by elderly and frail people.

They will not be able, or want, to physically trundle a heavy, cumbersome wheelie bin through their living rooms each week and so many of them will have no alternative but to site their ugly bin in their small front gardens of that main thoroughfare of the town.

The bins will not only be unsightly but also a huge temptation for the Friday and Saturday night drunken youths to empty a few all over the local pavements and roads.

I can also think of many other problems that would be created around the town if this scheme is introduced.

Not only will our towns have a huge environmental cost to bear but as one and a quarter million pounds is to be spent on buying bins, and perhaps another £1 million on converting the refuse trucks, and the additional weekly costs of collection (it is far quicker to throw plastic sacks into the lorry than hitch up bins and wait for them to be emptied) our council tax bills are also likely to rise considerably.

Please, please councillors, please think again. If you want to restrict the amount of rubbish collected it could easily be done by firm restriction of only two plastic sacks per household each week.

But you must also provide more locally sited containers for waste paper, bottles and cans and cardboard and plastic bottles.

Above all, please do not turn our towns and villages into slummy, unattractive forests of ugly, smelly and dirty wheelie bins.

ALAN SCOTFORD

Marshfield Road

Chippenham