SIR – I refer to your recent excellent editorial and fellow letter writers comments concerning the state of the roads, not just in St Albans generally but specifically on the service road serving Homebase, Volkswagen and the old Focus store in Hatfield

SIR - I refer to your recent excellent editorial and fellow letter writers' comments concerning the state of the roads, not just in St Albans generally but specifically on the service road serving Homebase, Volkswagen and the old Focus store in Hatfield Road.

Usually, it is pretty easy, legally speaking, to establish who is responsible for the maintenance and repair of a road in our area - either it's STADC or Herts County Council.

It appears though in this case that we have a tryst between the aforementioned retailers and the dodgy silence of the owners/tenants of the retail/industrial units the road serves.

I make no comment as to who may be ultimately liable. That will be for the courts to decide. However, surely common sense should prevail before it reaches litigation.

Here's my easy solution to cut through the BS and bureaucracy. It isn't rocket science and it doesn't take a brain of Einstein proportions to fathom it out.

Why doesn't a kindly workman (employed by whoever) armed with a few buckets of tarmac costing relative pennies compared to the future cost of litigants' claims simply toddle off down to the site and fill in the four or so potholes as a temporary measure until legal responsibility is determined?

Alas, such a simple solution is beyond the grasp of modern man as well the pockets of the retailers - and so the dispute will be allowed to continue to fester until either a person gets injured tripping down one of the deep depressions or the 100th motorist damages their car committing the cardinal sin of driving to one of the establishments to avail either company of their custom.

It is then that the stakes will be raised as lawyers WILL determine who is liable and a claim, maybe even a class action, will result in tens of thousands of pounds being paid out.

For goodness sake St Albans, for the cost of the tarmac, about twenty quid, the issue could be easily, if only temporarily resolved with peace restored all round until a permanent solution is found. It makes me wonder why, in an age where we can fly men to the moon and cure some forms of cancer, seemingly trivial issues perplex the minds of the decision makers in our society?

Perhaps it is mindfog, perhaps recalcitrance, perhaps laziness that stands in the way of simple progress.

I call it plain stupidity and each of the parties at the heart of this dispute wears it with a badge as loud and as proud as can be!

BARRY CASHIN

Green Lane, St Albans