I WOULD like to welcome Dan Whiteway to Andover and hope you have a long and enjoyable stay.

Can I take you away from the recent political letters and talk about Andover, as I have a few questions etc, for Phil North the new Leader of Test Valley Borough Council?

Welcome Mr North, I am hoping as a much younger leader than your predecessor you have more innovative ideas for Andover Now!

We have for far too long heard about Andover Vision but surely even you realise that it won’t exist if something isn’t done about Andover now! Are you ready to listen to the Andover public?

You know, the ordinary people who live and work here, the ones who actually care more about what happens to the town itself and not necessarily the surrounds, or will you also hide within your selected cabinet?

Why are more and more parents telling me they won’t let their children come into Andover because it’s now known as a drugs town? Because they (TVBC) have had to close the public toilets because the problem is too big for them (TVBC). Have the VIPs really got their own key to use the public toilets in Sainsbury car park when no other members of the public are allowed? Is the security guard at the George Yard public toilets really being paid £1,000 a week and if so how do you (TVBC) warrant it?

How many more shops, names please, have signed up to your scheme of letting the public at random use their toilets? And where are the signs as promised in this newspaper? Will anything be done about the so-called vagrants, who think they can lie around anywhere they like, begging and frightening the young and the vulnerable old?

Will you concentrate on updating the High Street and the empty shops, before wasting more money on the area around the Town Mills?

People are progressively becoming more impatient with TVBC in this town, with the borough council pushing through their own schemes, but not listening to their ideas!

Would you also agree that TVBC alongside HCC in widening the pavements around this town for the use of bicycles, have now turned the pavements into extensions of the road allowing cars to be fully parked on these pavements at night, thus preventing either pedestrians or bicycles to use them. I hope you have more of a sympathetic ear than those before you!

Ron Wood, Bridge Street, Andover