I ATTENDED one of these ‘consultations’ the county council are giving to extol the benefits of their wonderful ‘improvements’ to Kidderminster railway station.

I wish I hadn’t, because it provided a perfect view of the modern planning process in action.

For a start, it is intended to put traffic lights at this road junction, whilst keeping the pedestrian lights a little further down Comberton Hill.

Anyone who uses this road will realise that another set of lights here will result in traffic queues round the entire ring road at one end, and as far out as Spennells at the other.

In addition, yet more parking spaces are to be removed, and the few remaining traders will have to deal with constant streams of standing traffic outside their premises, with all the noise and pollution this will bring.

In the station approach itself, the tree and all the heritage street furniture is to be destroyed and replaced by traffic lanes covered in the usual, hideous, legalised graffiti, forest of modern road signs and cycle lanes which no-one will use, to remove any traces of the old at this important Kidderminster tourist site.

Of the new station itself there are no details, so one must assume that the current vile, flat-roofed box will be replaced by another vile, flat-roofed box.

The ‘consultation’ process itself is a joke.

Any scheme which is rolled out to the public at Easter for work to begin in July, will long since have had all the details decided by the council, and you may be sure that any input the serfs and peasants who pay their council tax might suggest will make not the most minute particle of difference.

The council are merely going through the motions here, telling the public what they will do – whether the public like it or not.

This scheme benefits nobody – except the coterie of consultants and other hangers-on the council keeps on its books.

The traffic lights are to cost around £700,000 which is a large percentage of the total cost.

Is there anyone else out there who thinks this money might be better spent on repairing those moribund, rutted, potholed, farm tracks which used to be called roads?

MICHAEL DUNN Sandbourne Drive Bewdley