It was with concern that I read the article last week on page 9 of the Gazette.

This Government seems to have a strongly anti-rural attitude and this has yet again shown itself in the underfunding of services in our rural county.

The grant per capita under the Standard Spending Assessment is well below that given to urban authorities despite the higher spend requirement in rural areas due to longer communications distances etc. The SSAs are biased in favour of urban areas. I support any actions we can take to make this, or any, Government treat rural counties properly in their SSAs.

I was, however, disturbed by the picture (00822/24EG) and the caption on page 9 accompanying the story.

This surely shows a road in mainly good condition but with an unauthorised "passing-place" being created by careless drivers using the soft verge, so damaging the edge of the metalled highway.

I wish our councils would discourage this bad practice and I wonder why they are not taking measures to prevent this.

This bad habit is all too common in our rural lanes and I ask all readers to avoid using the verges at all times.

The verge is not part of the metalled road and often has deep drainage channels that will destroy your suspension or at least damage it, making your vehicle unsafe to use.

Further, many drivers use the lanes as a "rat-run" and use our drive entrances as unofficial passing places, putting us at risk and damaging the surface of our drives.

You do not use someone's driveway in a town as a passing place please do not do so in the rural lanes.

Further, too many drive too fast for the conditions. The speed limit may be 60mph, but that is unsafe on a narrow rural lane.

So please slow down for your own safety as well as that of other road users. This is especially important in the small villages and hamlets that have been left out of the rural limits scheme, but have even narrower roads.

Plus, you should slow when meeting another vehicle so you can negotiate past each other without driving on to the soft verges.

Michael S Perry

Spirthill

Near Calne