WYCOMBE District Council always gets blamed when things go wrong. This time I want to sing its praises.

When we moved into our house in 1966 the woods at the side made a pleasant screen from the hill above. Now the woods are used as a rubbish dump and the high old trees block all but midsummer sun from our garden. They are dangerous -- we watched as one blew down in the big 1987 storm.

Over the years, the council's upkeep of our stretch of woods can best be described as the minimal necessary and usually after a complaint from one of us residents.

Until this week, when suddenly we had a letter to say that on September 15 work would start on felling the trees, cleaning up the woods and replanting with more appropriate trees, in accordance with the Wycombe Woodlands Action Plan (WWAP) adopted by the council in November 1997. Brilliant!

I had never before heard of the WWAP, but my thanks go to the present Wycombe District Council -- both for caring about our town environment and for taking the trouble to let us residents know what is happening.

Marie Burnand

Tancred Road

High Wycombe

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.