Many council services are not user friendly

You have to go back to the days of rate capping when central government imposed restrictions on the excessive spending of public money in our district.

The name “The Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire” came into regular usage then and usually as a sign of criticism of our civic leaders!

Many fellow readers will remember the ludicrous appointment of the Peace Officer for Sheffield for example.

I must say that I can fully support much of the present negative comments made about our council.

The handling of the tree felling contract is an obvious case in point. To bang on residents’ doors at 5am to order them out of bed to move cars so that the contractors could start work was extremely insensitive and high-handed.

The order in which roads have been selected for resurfacing seems not to take into account that those in the poorest state ought to be mended first surely!

Another area where the council has, in my opinion, taken decisions which are not in the interests of its residents is when it comes to highways restrictions. Three examples which I cannot comprehend: firstly, why are motorists no longer able to turn left at the bottom of Glossop Road when coming from the Hallamshire Hospital?

Before this change we were able to avoid the heavily used West Street which has many pedestrians and those hazardous tram lines and use the dual carriageway that is Netherthorpe Road to travel to North and East areas of Sheffield.

Another head scratcher is why we cannot travel the whole length of Furnival Road when coming into the city centre from Meadowhall? Instead motorists have to add to the heavy traffic on The Parkway and Derek Dooley Way to progress our journey!

Finally, the new IKEA store is sited at a four way traffic light controlled crossroads. However drivers approaching the store along Weedon Street are not allowed to access the entrance directly but must turn left and have to do a detour of almost a mile by having to drive to Meadowhall roundabout and then coming all the way back in order to get into IKEA, thus adding to that shopping centre’s already high level of road users!

It was certainly this case over this Easter break when the traffic was gridlocked in this part of our city, except on Sunday of course , when all large stores had to close, resulting in many shoppers having to get their retail fix concentrated on the other days.

I am sure fellow readers can come up with similar examples of poor decision making by our public servants.

In short I would argue that many council services are not user-friendly.

Paul Johnson

Wortley Road, High Green, Sheffield S35

Paul Johnson

Wortley Road High Green, S35