I WAS brought up on the Chapelfields estate.

If you read the articles in the paper (October 18 and 19), then apply both common sense and strategic positive action by everybody - residents, the council, youth organisations, the police and your reporters - you will go a long way to alleviating the estate's problems.

Chapelfields is a council estate and a large part of the responsibility for what has happened has to rest with the council, although as you rightly report there is no excuse for wanton social disorder.

When we were young and growing up there, we not only had a council-funded youth club, we also had a magnificent council-funded park where we could go almost every night. Although it was a tough estate, there was never any serious trouble.

There was a good community spirit, where the adults especially on the estate were very well respected by the teenagers.

Now there is no park, no youth club, just a pub. This is an estate abandoned by successive councils.

Just like anything that is abandoned it will continue to decline unless those who have the money and power, the council, do something about it.

The people who live there are mostly decent, hard-working people who have played a large part in making this great city what it is today.

So come on York Council, stop wasting our money on consultants' fees for projects which never get out of the starting blocks and instead plough it into all York's council estates which are the backbone of our city.

These working class people deserve better service and respect from people who are meant to be elected to serve them and their interests.

Sean Maher,

Speculation Street,

York.

Updated: 09:19 Thursday, October 21, 2004