Despite valid concerns and criticisms of the palm trees along Southend seafront, Southend Council is again ignoring the town’s residents and is planting a load more.

Throwing good money after bad springs to mind, as the cabinet demonstrates yet again it is incapable of cutting its losses, consulting its fellow councillors or making sensible decisions.

I was assured in writing the palm trees that had been replaced along the seafront were not dead and were merely recovering in the council nursery, before being transplanted elsewhere.

Now the council has finally admitted those trees were, in fact, dead, which was obvious when I saw the contractors throwing them in the back of their van.

Jackie Callow
Cambridge Road
Southend

...I believe Southend Council has made one of its biggest cock-ups with the seafront changes.

We have a confusing cycle track running alongside a narrowed road, and orphan tropical trees planted in soil which is neither ericaceous nor acid, but clay.

They should have looked at Brighton, where there is a wide prom and a cycle track nowhere near the road and reasonably safe for all users.

In Southend, we have tried to squeeze a quart into a pint mug by reducing a useable dual carriageway into a single width road, with an equal width bike track.

Who decided a town in Essex should sport the sort of trees which usually grow on a paradise beach in the South Pacific?

Who decided a cycle track should run alongside a prom and a road, inevitably inducing injury from palm tree abrasions and pedestrian advice about where to stick your pump?

In the past, when bicycles were more plentiful, cyclists had to share the road with motorists.

Trevor Murdin
Flemming Crescent
Leigh