WHAT the hell is happening to St Helens? We have got speed humps everywhere, chicanes, bollards, roads narrowed, pavements brought out on corners and this makes it impossible for even a transit sized van to get round without going on the wrong side of the road and very difficult for emergency vehicles to operate.

The town is a complete dump. Everywhere you go there is rubbish, derelict buildings and dirty pavements and louts roaming around. Bus shelters wrecked and phone boxes, parks vandalised, tennis courts, bowling greens and kiddies play areas, nothing is safe from the louts. And the Police doing very little to stop it.

I have heard recently that planning permission has been turned down again to rebuild the cowshed on Stanley Bank Road because it's in the green belt area.

But the Council want to build a so called By-Pass in the same green belt area as the Cowshed. It will take traffic off the main road for less than a fifth of a mile and then the traffic is back on the road it was taken off.

I think it will put all the shops on the road from the Ship public house to the Huntsman public house at risk with no access, no trade.

And it will ruin a large part of green belt area. Trees will be chopped down and an ancient footpath will be damaged, but the thing I fear most is the threat to Stanley Bank Wood. It is an oasis in the middle of a dump we call St Helens.

FRANK and Seb (name and address supplied).