Mrs B Allott (Postbag, August 30) reminds us of the shabby appearance of Salisbury with so many empty shops. In the local directory there are no less than 19 charity shops, eight being in Catherine Street, locally known as 'charity street'. Do we really need more shops, as proposed in the Maltings, or is the council so out of touch with modern marketing methods? The shabby appearance of Salisbury is not enhanced by the roadside dirt encountered from the end of the Alderbury bypass, right around the ring road, where piles of dirt enable bushes and sometimes trees to actively grow in the dirt on the centre reservation neglected by Highways England. Should the strap line for Wiltshire be altered to ‘where nobody cares’.

Andrew Poole

Alderbury