At the Stanwell Forum last week residents raised the car parking issue. Cars parked on the pavement on the grass or anywhere they are not supposed to park.

It is necessary to remember that the Government reduced the number of off street parking places by one third that developers had to provide for houses, shops etc and this has made parking places scarce and expensive in places like local hospitals (£95 million across the country).

The private car is part of the English way of life and here to stay even though the New Labour Government wish to take them all off the road and force the public onto overcrowded public transport and bicycles.

Before every decision, we need Government to conduct a root cause analysis because you must treat the disease, not the symptoms. This applies particularly to car parking, which is like pouring water into a jug and if you keep pouring in water it will eventually overflow. The root cause is continuing to build cars at the top without removing cars from the bottom.

Spelthorne reached car overflow years ago. Having established this fact, Dr Beeching was allowed to decimate our public transport system forcing the public to use the private car as a necessity.

Trains also have passed saturation point and the longer trains promised will only cope with the forecast increase in passengers. To bring public transport back to life we must make public transport cheaper, more efficient, reliable, comfortable, sufficient to cope with demand and less reliant on fossil fuels. In this area we have also failed miserably.

The private car has spawned to such a degree that our roads have become thinner and more dangerous because of cars parked on both sides of the road and green space used as illegal car parks or race tracks.

It is obvious that a decision needs to be taken on what is the maximum number of cars our roads can comfortably take. I suggest each new or second hand car requires removal of an old car from the bottom, starting with the two million untaxed and uninsured cars; special arterial roads for commercial vehicles only; restrict sizes of vehicles in some congested areas; restricted loading and unloading times; open up the roads from man made restrictions; unused bike lanes removed and changes to working hours. In other words we need Government to concentrate on real problems instead of imaginary ones like political correctness.

COUN JACK PINKERTON Stanwell North ward