I FEEL I must reply to a point made by W Meadows (Letters, September 29) in which he states that the council has failed to spend money on private sector houses in amounts proportionate to those lavished on council houses, in particular, Roman Road.

Mr Meadows wants to get his facts correct before making such statements.

Yes, Roman Road has had a lot of money spent on it over the past few years, but this has come from a fund called Estate Action which has got to be used for a specific area. These monies have now ended in 1995. Any monies for day to day repairs of council houses come from the rents collected from the borough council houses of which there are approximately 11,500.

Each year the council applies for money from the government under the Housing Investment Programme which is for both public and private sector housing.

The amount granted is only a small proportion of the amount applied for and in real money terms has fallen over the past years.

The largest part of this money goes to private sector housing.

So please Mr Meadows, give Roman Road a rest as any other improvements will only get done by applying to the Government for grants to be used on this area alone, and not from council tax monies as some people seem to think.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.