SOME weeks ago your editorial expressed delight that the proposed merger of Cotswold and West Oxfordshire District Councils to form a single unitary authority had been halted. 

Last week you had two stories where you highlighted problems where the remoteness of the Gloucester-based county council (GCC) as service provider caused real problems to the Cirencester and the Combined West Oxon and Cotswold Districts respectively.

First the crazy lane closures around the bypass.

Everyone over the age of four living in Cirencester must have realised that closing a lane of the inner bypass at peak times would cause traffic chaos.

Unfortunately, this was not obvious to GCC, and why should it be? 

Do people of Cirencester know about Gloucester, Lydney, Cinderford, Sharpness, Berkeley et al? 

OK, I do because I was born in the Forest, but even after closing a carriageway and causing near gridlock while a tractor mowed and eight blokes wandered about litter picking was pretty pathetic.

After all, Anthony Curry does not close the road when he mows. Then, for an encore, they decided to prune trees they should never have let grow on the Tesco roundabout and trapped people in queues for almost an hour.  

I am not saying a Cirencester/Witney based authority would not have made the first mistake but they sure as hell would not have repeated it if complaints could have been made at Trinity Road.

More seriously, the students of Lechlade are being deprived of a bus service.

At present it is subsidised by Oxfordshire and very few of their residents use it.

It runs from West Oxon through Cotswold to Swindon. 

If West Oxon and Cotswold were the unitary authority, a good case for a subsidy could be made, but why should Oxfordshire subsidise Cotswold residents?  

Obviously, Lechlade is somewhere GCC may have heard of, they probably think it is near Henley on Thames, but it’s hardly on anyone’s list of priorities compared with Cinderford, Tewkesbury etc.

If you think lousy north-south communications and depriving young people of an education are a good price to pay for keeping the ‘traditional’ (1972 when we lost the south to Avon) Gloucestershire boundaries that’s fine but no crocodile tears, please.

Of course, last week’s congestion will be as nothing compared to 2020 when the new 5000-resident “Bathurst” Estate south of Chesterton becomes occupied. 

Though hang on, with all these Europeans going home will we actually find anyone to live in them?

REG FFORBES