I assume he means his community charge which is collected by Rother District Council, and which is made up from component parts that in turn go to county council, police, the fire service, and parish councils to provide their services. That tax is by far the lowest around, providing value for money. I would point out that transport matters are the responsibility of county council, not district, however as Rother has a very clear interest as a stakeholder in The Link Road it is right and proper that a strategy relating to it was produced. As far as the traffic survey is concerned, again, I underline that this is not something that RDC would be involved with; it would however be county council. As The Link Road has been the subject of a judicial review over recent months any comment would have been inappropriate. The connectivity of the Bexhill/Hastings link road with the A21 was raised at a meeting held at Westminster, chaired by the then Transport Minister Lord Adonis, the Highways Agency, who were represented at that meeting, were reluctant to commit to additional public consultations at a time when the Link Road itself was going through the same process. I am personally not aware as to who will construct the Link Road when it finally goes through all the hoops, only to say that as with all such projects they have to go through the normal tender process which includes advertising in The European Journal. In the end it is about getting best value for you, the taxpayer. The employment areas mentioned would be the facility to address the huge unemployment that Mr Bolden refers to, and with that the need to provide housing for those employees and the many local people who also want a home of their own. The alternative would be to have much more house building in rural areas to meet the demand as set out by all recent Governments. Ian Jenkins Brede