The Safe Routes to School schemes supported by the Welsh Assembly Government have worked well at encouraging children to walk to school. Providing safe routes for specific community members to access specific services should become a part of developing sustainable communities.

In Talbot Green there is a large disabled population and the community has not been designed to support them. To access the local supermarket they have to cross dangerous roads, which do not have curb ramps or pedestrian crossings meaning that wheelchair users can become stranded in the road and unable to rejoin the pavement.

The council needs to provide safe routes to shops and other essential services for the disabled and elderly. This could be done through greater provision of pedestrian crossings, wider and flatter pedestrian walkways and more busses adapted to accommodate wheelchairs.

Disabled drivers could also be encouraged to use shops and services through there being more free disabled parking bays close to shops and other core services.

Jonathan Bishop has confirmed his intention to stand as the Labour County Borough Council Candidate for Talbot Green.
The 24-year-old, of Heol-y-Parc, Efail Isaf submitted his nomination form last week, which was signed by prominent members of the community including Freeman Noel Israel and founder of Friends in Retirement, Beryl Sheffers.
Mr Bishop has spent the last year serving as a community councillor for Llantiwt Fardre, but said he would not be seeking re-election “I have enjoyed being a community councillor and have done a lot to develop innovative policies, but I wouldn’t be able to give 100 per cent to Talbot Green if I stood in both elections”.
A Freeman of Llantrisant, Mr Bishop has many family connections with Talbot Green; it is where his grandmother lives and where his mother was raised as a child. Asked what his priorities are if he is elected, Mr Bishop said he wanted to focus on local issues, “If elected I would call for Talbot Green to be at the heart of the litter clean-up campaign and there to be greater provision of child play areas and better traffic management”.
You can find out more about Jonathan Bishop’s campaign on the Internet by visiting http://www.jonathanbishop.org.uk/election2004

I believe Chad Rickard and Alan Speake were inaccurate in their suggestion that Rhondda Cynon Taf Council was almost bankrupt under Labour (Observer, April 29).

As a matter of fact there were reserves of £4m and the so‐called lost council cash
was because of accountancy errors, not mismanagement by Labour.
The nationalists might be able to claim that the corporate side of the council has
improved, in that it no longer makes accountancy errors, but the policy
development and delivery side has got worse ‐ not better.
We are not seeing essential repairs to council houses being made, with some
houses in a state where they could cause injury to somebody.
We are not seeing any commitment to increasing play provision for children or any
commitment to providing for our senior citizens.
It appears that the only thing this council are committed to is cutting back on
essential services and failing to deliver on its promises.