A letter recently criticised County Cllr John Thomson for “calling in” the Bradford Town Council’s controversial HCZ scheme. I wish to support Cllr Thomson.

I think he did a proper and courageous thing, given the extent of popular opposition to the scheme. Local democracy is all very well but not when members of the Town Council (not all, be it noted) pursue vanity projects for which there is no clear electoral mandate. The bridge saga was bad enough. Had there been a readiness then to consider different solutions, a possible alternative bridge might have been agreed upon. The same goes here with the HCZ.

As another correspondent has pointed out, a slightly revised scheme which retained pedestrian crossings might well have won the day. But some councillors just weren’t listening.

With two debacles to their credit, perhaps any of them who pursued both schemes regardless should be considering their positions as councillors, and resigning.

Of course, what Bradford really needs is a bypass; something which would have happened before now in even the near-bankrupt parts of mainland Europe but which we will not see in my lifetime.

A one way system, also suggested in correspondence, could make life easier but please keep it simple – up Market Street/Masons Lane, down New Road/Silver Street– a standard gyratory with no complications and no exceptions. Traffic flows, air quality and road safety might also be improved marginally with a reversal of priorities at the A363/B3105 junction by Frankleigh House and similarly at the B3105/B3107 junction on the Bradford-Holt road.

Both would tend to encourage vehicles to go round the town rather than through it, although it has to be said that the B3105 is far from fit for that purpose.

J S Holden, Budbury Court, Budbury Place, Bradford on Avon.