Come the Council elections next year it will be three years since I campaigned during the Council by-election in May 2019 on the vexed problem of traffic circulation and parking in Haddington.

And what has happened in the intervening years and months? Nothing.

There have been proposals and consultations but the situation remains the same. In fact it's worse because of the new housing which has boosted the numbers of cars in the streets.

Dear Editor,

My initial euphoria felt when the Community Empowerment Act (2015) was passed is wearing thin. The Act included a section updating and replacing all previous allotment legislation. All Local Authorities are now required to maintain a centralised waiting list and must take reasonable steps to ensure that the number of people on it at any one time is not more than 50% of their stock of allotment plots and that no-one waits more than 5 years to get a plot.

Sir,

Like many of your East Lothian readers, I reckon, my existing suspicions
were confirmed by your report that the number of new homes being registered
in the Garden County is considerably higher than the UK constituency
average (Courier, 2.9.21), currently by about two and a half times.

It is quite clear that the provision of infrastructure and services has
not matched this exponential rise in housebuilding in the county, as
implied by Messrs MacAskill and McLennan in your report. I think this
aspect needs much greater emphasis. It is already proving problematic in terms
of new residents seeking to register with GP surgeries, for example, and
the increased traffic on county roads is quite noticeable, to say
nothing of the ever lengthening traffic queues on the streets of Haddington.

Our main through route, the A1, is already busier than ever, and who
knows what it will be like when the new town at Blindwells comes on
stream. You only have to look at the inability of the Edinburgh City
Bypass to cope with traffic at peak times to see what the future might
hold for us in East Lothian.

I'm sure we all hope that the county will continue to be an attractive
place to live, but without proper planning and resourcing in support of
the myriad new housing developments this may prove to be a forlorn hope.
The Council planning committee and officials need to take heed and up
their respective games here.

Yours faithfully,

East Lothian Council is introducing some changes to your recycling collection later this year.

The first big change is a move to weekly collections. It is intended that from 20th September 2021 recyclable material will be collected from households on a weekly basis with all materials collected on the same day. This refreshed recycling service is designed to help us all recycle more than ever before. The more frequent collections mean that you might not need to use as many boxes (unlikely).