With rats now invading Brighton and Hove City Council's own residential care homes (The Argus, August 12), the city is most certainly the place to be for vermin.

Since being taken in-house at a cost of millions, standards of refuse collection are even worse than under Sita, with tons of uncollected

rubbish providing food for rodents and seagulls.

In its expensive advertising for the new service, the council said such would be the efficiency gains it would be able to do kerbside recycling as well as refuse collection, as happens already in Adur and Lewes, thus saving on landfill costs. But such is the council's inefficiency it fails to collect our rubbish properly and now wants to charge us even more for taking away our recyclables.

The Pigeon Control Advisory Service has tried to interest the council in the humane reduction of these birds for years, this being one of the most infested cities in the world. The response has been nil. Pest control officers say they only deal with mice and rats. So, if your car paintwork is attacked, your listed building crumbles or you contract psittacosis, it's not their problem.

The council's dirty attitude extends to the beach, too. All that smashed glass from the Fatboy Slim concert will take years to wash away, during which time our feet will have been lacerated and seafront traders will have lost a lot of business. Such matters were of no concern to our councillors, so desperate to cash in on the "yoof" vote next year by allowing the concert to go ahead in the name of "culture" that they disregarded the obvious consequences.

Heroin needles left to accumulate on public open space and in the few public lavatories we have left are yet another sign of how mucky the city has become.

The council should have its environmental health powers taken away by the Government until it has an administration able and willing to keep our city clean and tidy.

-Ian Hills, Blackman Street, Brighton