Recently a needle was found in the Oxford Road Community Garden, near Reading West Station. I had heard that the council ran a needle hotline, to encourage people to get them disposed of safely rathr than risk touching them themselves. So I called the needle hotline, to find its just the Reading Council telephone. They told me it would cost £50 to remove it! I told them that was a disastrous policy, but they insisted that it was the case for needles found on private land.

I contacted my three councillors about it, two of them responded, one of them wrote to a third councilor, Paul Gittings.

I suggest anyone who thinks this policy is wrong to also write to their Cllrs about it, it seems to me to be inviting people to take needless risks.