Sir, I feel compelled to stand up for those council workers who no doubt work under very tight budgets and make valiant efforts to beautify our towns.

The response of councillor Atkins to the appearance of the castle flower planter in Wallingford (your front page article of June 18) is demeaning to a great many of these workers. While the planter is clearly not to councillor Atkins’s taste, her comments are both insensitive and ridiculous. Not everybody agrees with her efforts on behalf of her constituents, but nobody takes to the front page of the press to call her work “ugly and cheap”.

Her appeal to safety is absurd. The castle is smaller than the artistically chosen camera angle suggests and the road layout is such that no driver can be expected to approach a dangerous speed. Appealing to the “health and safety” culture as a means of objecting to something on matters of personal taste is surely beneath our councillors.

You would really have thought a councillor, both of the town and county, would be more sensitive about the work of her colleagues. Wallingford castle’s role in the English Civil War is well known – why a current public servant wants to start another civil war over a flower pot defies imagination.

Lee Upcraft Clapcot Way Wallingford