This is what you have been writing to us about this week.

To send your own letter, email bfpletters@london.newsquest.co.uk or send it to Bucks Free Press, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, Loudwater, HP10 9TY.

Chapel renovation will be costly

Your report in last week’s issue of the BFP (February 28) suggests Chesham Town Council is committed to take no action to arrest the deterioration of the cemetery chapel.

While it was clear at the Recreation and the Arts Committee meeting that the cost of renovating the chapel would be considerable, I emphasised the importance of preventing any further deterioration in the structure as it would be much more costly to repair in future. This was understood and accepted by the meeting. My understanding of the position is that Chesham Town Council will look at the possibilities of securing grant funding for the renovation work and will invite the Friends of Chesham Cemetery to collaborate with them in any decisions relating to the repairs and future use of the chapel.

Cllr Roderick McCulloch, Friends of Chesham Cemetery

No one will take responsibility

YOU can leave a car parked almost anywhere providing it has tax, has a current MOT and is insured. There are certain restricted areas where you shouldn’t park as laid out in the highway code and other areas which are clearly marked and are usually regularly monitored.

Supposing a vehicle appears on the roadside outside your home, not causing an obstruction, so it’s allowed to be there. After a few days one might inquire of neighbours as to the identity of the owner, or perhaps, if the vehicle had been involved in a crime or has been abandoned.

What should you do? The easiest option is to ignore it and get on with your life. What if a vehicle is left for a month or two? Nobody knows who owns it. It is taxed. It has a current MOT. What can you do? What should you do?

The long and short of it is again, nothing. Our neighbourhood has such a vehicle, outside in the street, and has now been resident here for a whole year. The tyres are flat. It is green from the algae growing in the wet weather. It has not moved. The MOT expired months ago. The vehicle has been untaxed for a month. Can we now get it removed? As a good citizen you should report it. Right? Who would be interested? The council? The police? DVLA? The council were mildly interested but after contacting the owner, who said it ‘hasn’t been abandoned’, were powerless to act as the vehicle ‘is not abandoned’ and were sorry but closed the case with no further action.

The police agreed that technically it is illegal but unless the vehicle is driven and witnessed by an officer, they have little power to pursue the case. Despite the police website indicating that a parked vehicle needs a current MOT and the owner could receive a £1,000 fine. They suggest this sort of thing is left to the ‘local council’ who should have the necessary powers of removal. DVLA take reports online or over the phone and at first, appear interested. They assure us action will be taken as the nationwide advertising suggests. Tax it or lose it.

Sadly, DVLA don’t have a feedback system. You cannot be sure any action is being taken or that your report has actually reached them. The report is passed to a team who will visit your area and clamp the vehicle and then ultimately remove the vehicle if it remains untaxed.

There is no timescale on any action they may take. In theory you can wait indefinitely for a result. Everyone is interested but no one will actually take responsibility for getting the vehicle removed. The owner may be prosecuted or not, and the vehicle may be moved or not. It seems a poor system for dealing with a relatively simple problem. Has the owner caused a nuisance or been anti-social? We would say yes but it’s only our neighbourhood that has to put up with it. Not theirs!

Kevin Sammons, via email

Why Labour backed new budget

Buckinghamshire Council Budget – the realities and the background to the Labour Party’s decision on 27th February to support it.

The council tax bills residents will receive over the next few weeks will differ considerably in different parts of the county. Chiltern District Council will see increases of just 2.3%. Aylesbury Vale Area will see increases of 3.72%. South Bucks will see increases of 3.9%. Wycombe District area will see increases of 5.45%. Ironically, the residents in the Wycombe area will see the largest rise and yet be the least represented democratically – because they do not have an elected town council.

Despite the budget as presented amounting to £1.2bn, there will still be numerous questions for the new Buckinghamshire Council to answer on how the new local authority manages elderly care and community health which will be a large financial consideration and no identifiable proposals on how to rationalise and deliver these services.

Whilst there was some money put into the budget in year one to account for the ongoing questions around children services and for turning their portfolio of responsibilities around, going forward it will be less certain as the budgets are set for savings, with additional considerations of funding for special educational needs and this was a major consideration when compiling them. In fairness, there were some good changes to the budget for example, key worker housing and looking how to provide affordable properties for them.

That the Alliance/Liberal Democrats voted against the budget, seems particularly strange after working within the council with others to increase funding in vulnerable areas. However, it is for them to explain their actions.

What gets lost in the complexity of all the detail is the fact that this budget it was meant to be a transition arrangement; compiling five sets of council tax into one means there isn’t any real spare capacity within it and yet it has managed to cover expenditure in what is described as a ‘golden staple’.

To have voted against this budget would’ve made a complete nonsense of the Labour Party campaigning for many years on areas of consideration such as children services, special educational needs and highways.

To have done otherwise could have quite rightfully suggested the Labour Party didn’t support those services.

Many people’s welfare remains vulnerable to the outcomes and it would have been irresponsible to seek to defeat a budget when we were not able to present an alternative budget and demonstrate how we could amend or change that budget within the constraints of our ability and the time available. In fact, if the budget had actually been defeated, how could we say to our residences that on day one of the new Buckinghamshire Council they don’t have a budget or all funds to deliver services?

The Labour Party is a responsible party and doesn’t vote for headlines and short-term political gain.

Tax increases of above 3% such as the one in High Wycombe are supposed to automatically invoke a referendum of residents. We were advised that this wouldn’t be the case and it was denied that there was any possibility to raise such a narrative in these matters against the budget for short-term political gain which would be disrespectful to the residents with false claims and misleading actions on such an important fundamental question.

The Labour Party will be back scrutinising the council, checking operating balances from day one to protect vulnerable people services in Buckinghamshire.

Cllr Robin Stuchbury, Labour Party, Bucks shadow authority

HS2 was down to the Tories

YOUR Bucks Residents Association (BRA) correspondent (Letters to the Editor, February 21) invites local residents to support his party instead of ‘blindly voting Conservative’.

This must especially hurt his own former colleagues within the local Tories though I expect by now they are over their sad loss. I doubt whether the whines register at all within Downing Street any more than they do from the flooded folks of South Yorkshire or Gloucester.

Indeed, self-isolation seems so far to be the government’s prescribed remedy for all ills, be they viral, rail or meteorological, at least that is the remedy personally practised by the Prime Minister.

HS2 was conceived in 2009 when a report began to be prepared and first saw the light of day in a report published in March 2010.

This was adopted and enthusiastically promoted by the Tory-Liberal Democrat Government which took office in May 2010. The plans continued to be developed and further promoted by successive Tory Governments right up to the present day. I believe the previously mentioned BRA spokesperson held elected office himself under a Tory banner for most, or at least some, of this 11-year period, though I have not kept track his varying allegiances.

HS2 was thus born under a Labour Government but its infancy, childhood and upbringing have been entirely the responsibility of Tories and their supporters.

If they had any concern that this unwanted progeny had been ‘dumped’ on them (or Bucks) they have had quite a time and many opportunities to smother it.

The question facing voters is really whether they put their faith in Tories at all given their track record on public transport or indeed any other public service. I would hope that they choose to vote for an effective opposition to policies emanating from central government rather than for varying shades of blue supporter at home in Bucks. Labour will be standing candidates in all parts of the county in the May elections for the new Bucks Unitary Authority and will be holding both local and national Tories to account.

Ian Bates, High Wycombe

Crimes are not being punished

OH DEAR, I have written to this letters column on more than one occasion about inadequacies in our justice system that do nothing to address lawlessness by criminals in our otherwise law-abiding society.

I have been incensed week after week by reading reports of drug dealers, murderers, rapists and drivers who kill by dangerous driving, only to be given such paltry sentences that bear no relativity to the crimes they have committed.

I have just read the news in the BFP on page 8, Friday, February 28, that multiple speeding motorists who claimed to need their cars for everyday tasks like the school run and shopping(!) have avoided driving bans. They actually managed to convince Wycombe magistrates to let them off after pleading to be allowed to stay behind the wheel - what an absolute joke!

The exact reason that offending drivers are given points on their licences is that when you collect a said amount, you are then banned from driving as a punishment for endangering the lives of the public, thereby acting as a deterrent and showing that the laws of the road are there to be obeyed for a very good reason.

This means that if you wish to drive your vehicle over the legal speed limit and get caught enough times you will be punished by not being able to carry out your everyday tasks such as school trips and shopping.

Who the hell are these magistrates and on what planet do they reside? Maybe they too drive around on our roads exceeding the speed limits so feel that it doesn’t deserve the penalty that the law makers have decided it does - can anyone please tell me if a maximum penalty for any crime has ever actually been given? I doubt it, so why bother to even have one.

The magistrates who have let these idiot drivers off and have allowed them to be driving their cars on our roads (and no doubt will still speed) should be made to explain in detail why they think this is a good idea.

No wonder this country is in such a state of lawlessness - criminals have only to say their families will miss them if they go to prison and a judge will bow down to them and let them be at home.

Speeding on our roads is increasing day by day due, mainly, to cuts in traffic police being there to keep an eye. Speeding motorists have sat navs to tell them when they are approaching a speed camera as they are incapable of actually looking ahead and noticing anything. They will also miss seeing the child who is about to step in front of them and if they are speeding when they hit that child, it will mean death or serious injury, whereas at 30mph or lower they would have been able to stop. Who is supposed to make sure these magistrates do the job that they are there for? To uphold law and order and punish those that disobey it.

Roy Craig, Hazlemere