Anna Waite thinks druggies and single mothers are killing trade in Southend High Street.

It would be great to be married with two incomes and a nice family business.

But I’m not. Instead, I gave my well-paid job up in order to be a better parent to my child. I’m not in the best financial state, but my pennies go back into the town centre, as it’s where I live!

Generalisations like Ms Waite’s show that we are all tarred with an ugly brush by silver-spooners who have no idea what it is like to live a day in my shoes.

New lighting, pavements and bins will not bring people to the town centre.

Might I suggest free parking on weekends, like the large shopping centres do?

More shoppers equals more shops, as the old business rule of supply and demand goes.

When General Haig’s incompetence and Neville Chamberlain’s dithering appeasement created two whole generations of single mothers, I don’t recall seeing in my history books any signs in shop windows stating that single mothers weren’t welcome.

Ms Jack Monroe
Royal Mews
Southend

...I agree with Anna Waite’s analogy in respect of Southend High Street (Feb 28), although I cannot understand why she has now made this statement, being that she is not a councillor and doesn’t even live in Southend.

When she was leader of Southend Council and was later councillor responsible for highways and transport, she allowed the pedestrianised High Street to be dug up several times along its length by utility companies and allowed it to be left uneven with trip hazards which remain today.

Perhaps Mrs Waite should redress the balance by getting a block of luxury apartments built on the land near to the High Street in Whitegate Road that has been derelict for decades, adding to the deprivation look of the area.

This may kickstart and encourage the smart shops she envisages to come to the town centre. I wonder, of course, if she would be so quick as to encourage cheaper parking to facilitate all the shoppers.

I would ask, in these times of austerity, where she suggests the money would come from for her grandiose ideas, or would it mean even more cuts to services in the town by the council?

Lastly, I wonder why the controlling Conservative councillors who, I believe, are Conservatives, like Mrs Waite, had not addressed these problems before now.

David Drycope
Aylesbeare
Shoebury

...No one in Southend High Street wishes to see drunks or drug addicts, but how dare former councillor Anna Waite put single mums and benefit claimants in the same category?

Can she tell which young lady with a buggy is single or which of the shoppers are legitimately in receipt of benefits?

Many people claiming benefits have contributed a great deal to our society through their careers, just as many single mothers are hardworking and respectable members of it.

Those people who abuse the benefit system do not give politicians an excuse for publicly condemning all claimants or others on low incomes that need support from their community.

Ric Morgan
Hobleythick Lane
Westcliff

...Anna Waite criticises Southend High Street and therefore by definition, her Conservative council’s policies.

Her council promoted the building of thousands of flats over the last 12 years when residents were desperate for houses and affordable family homes.

The flats were mostly purchased at knock-down prices by the buy-to-let brigade, whose most lucrative tenants are benefit claimants, who promptly moved into Southend from other areas.

Effectively, all this flat development sucked in all the ne’er-do-wells to the town, with the result that Southend Council’s benefit bill has more than doubled from £42million in 2002 to a whopping £85million in 2011.

There is a direct and indisputable correlation between the number of new flats and the number of new benefit claimants.

I agree with Mrs Waite that something should be done to improve the High Street, but again, it is precisely because of her council’s policies that it continues to go to seed.

For more than ten years the council has promoted a new football stadium near Sutton Road with a massive retail estate attached to it, which, if built, will undoubtedly be the final nail in the High Street’s coffin.

Amid all this uncertainty Southend Council continues to pile on the misery of higher and higher parking charges. Even wealthy people who pay to park in Southend only do so for a limited time and visit only one or two specific shops.

They are not encouraged to shop around and make any impulse purchases because the parking charges are so high.

If the council had not made such a monumental mess of its budget it might have been able to afford to take a leaf out of another Conservative council’s book – that of West Oxfordshire, David Cameron’s constituency.

There, all parking charges were scrapped some time ago in order to encourage local shops and businesses.

I’m sure many of the town’s residents can’t wait to see Mrs Waite re-elected to the council and discover what exciting new initiatives she has in store for us.

Perhaps more flats? Or roadworks?

Steve Rawlinson
Walton Road
Southend

...I have been unemployed in the past and have had to briefly rely on benefits and it pains me to think that I am not part of Ms Waite’s vision for a better, more sustainable community.

It also pains me to think Ms Waite is quick to blame single mums – for whatever reason they are single.

I am sure Ms Waite would have more people supporting her if she actually looked at the real issues which affect all of us – lack of investment, lack of job opportunities, the increase in parking charges across the borough and a lack of vision by the current administration.

Robert Brown
Northumberland Avenue
Southend