SIR – I listen to our local radio all though the day and for the past several weeks I have noticed that Stevenage Borough Council advertise on it reporting the fact that 75 per cent of their customers are happy with their services and 81 per cent of their

SIR - I listen to our local radio all though the day and for the past several weeks I have noticed that Stevenage Borough Council advertise on it reporting the fact that 75 per cent of their customers are happy with their services and 81 per cent of their customers say that council staff are friendly.

This raises several issues:

1) Why is SBC wasting council tax paying for advertising telling me this. It is not like I can go to another council and ask them to provide me with these services.

2) It seems that SBC have contempt for anybody who complains because they say well 75 per cent of people are happy with us.

3) They seem to be actually proud of these figures. Taking the number of occupied households in Stevenage from the National Statistics website at 32,601 as of April 2004: SBC say 75 per cent of households are happy with our services or 25 per cent - or one in four or 8,150 households - are UNHAPPY with SBC services.

This is staggering because any service based company that had a customer satisfaction level of under 90 per cent would be in serious trouble and certainly wouldn't be paying for advertising telling people how bad it was.

At times I think that SBC needs a reality check and if they continue like they have been recently I certainly would be in favour of a Hertfordshire Unitary authority and scrap all the town councils.

Dr ADRIAN EMERY

The Paddocks

Stevenage