So what has gone wrong with the refuse collections? I am receiving more complaints than ever about the service. It's not just the odd house being missed but whole streets. You can blame the binmen for missing the odd bin here and there but not entire streets on the scale Brighton and Hove is now experiencing.

I read the statement by a Brighton and Hove City Council officer (The Argus, August 3) that radical changes cannot be made without a few problems -the trouble is, it's more than a few. I don't know why the service was not left as it was. The dustmen seemed quite content with the way it was all working. It seems to be a case of trying to mend something that wasn't broken.

In my opinion, the binmen are the only people that know how the service can be run, not people with fancy university degrees who have had no grass-roots experience.

Get it right this time and listen to those who know best or the city will find itself back in the bad old days of Sita mismanagement.

-Coun Geoff Wells, Brighton and Hove City Council