ARE the Knutsford Town Council and Cheshire East Council the two most incompetent councils in the country? And it’s my bad luck to be living under both of these councils.

Firstly, Cheshire East are presiding over the worst roads in living memory; the roads now are significantly worse than ten years ago. Are they going to do anything about this? It seems they are more interested in whether there is a cabinet or not, and a variety of loony programmes; who cares? We just want better roads and a better service.

Secondly, I note that Knutsford Town council’s mayor, Andrew Malloy, is shortly due to relinquish his office, and that can only be a good thing, as under his tenure we have seen the refusal to engage with town centre residents over the makers market, an outstandingly bad plan for the town centre, but worst of all, a huge rise in council tax of 37 per cent, followed by a pitiful explanation in the Knutsford Guardian (Letters, March 6), in which he seems to think that such rises are acceptable, making nebulous promises to reduce the tax again in the future, although how he intends to do this when he is no longer mayor is a mystery.

In the last year of 2019/20, our council tax increased by 12.6 per cent, and the new proposal for 2020/21 is of a37 per cent increase, meaning that parish council tax has increased by more than 54 per cent accumulated in the last two years.

This is truly breathtaking when the government has decreed borough council tax may not increase by more than three per cent a year.

Why is there not a similar cap on town and parish councils? It seems they are a law unto themselves, and the absolute nerve of the mayor to write to your paper and excuse the recruitment of three further employees at the council at a time when they have hit us with a 54 per cent increase in tax in two years.

Totally outrageous.

Roger Clarke, Knutsford