Sir,

I owe the county council and their officials an apology. In my letter to you last week I said I'd sent my Tenby Traffic Management Scheme Plan (August 1999) to them and they had ignored it. This isn't quite true.

On examining my records, I now see that I sent it to the National Parks Office since I was responding to some hare-brained scheme of theirs about the re-design of Tudor Square and the consequent impact on traffic in the town. Naively, I asked them to pass on my plan to the county council.

But, having written to the county council before and not having had either the courtesy of an acknowledgement or a reply, I assumed this was one more thing they hadn't bothered to respond to. I did though send it to our two local county councillors - Mickey Folland even told me he thought it might work!

I had taken the time out to try to think about Tenby and traffic (not Tenby's traffic problem, note) because I didn't want us to have to go again through the farcical experimental week where traffic was partially banned from the town centre.

Three years later, the 'problem' is still not even identified, but we are now facing a new four-week farce.

The decision to shut the town affects two groups of people. One group consists of those who work or live in town or need to collect or deliver from the town centre. This group is large, relatively constant and pollable. The second group is those whom we hope will visit the town for the first time. We all hope this group is very large and unpollable (i.e. we want them to come from anywhere).

The decision to shut the town to traffic seems to be based on what the county council think the second group might want, regardless of the first group's views even though they've not been polled. I've heard of the 'Nanny State'; is this 'Nanny County Council?'

Martin Lamb,

2 Rock House,

St. Julian's Street,

Tenby.