An outgoing councillor for Westbourne ward wrote that when traffic calming was initially being discussed for the Poets Corner area of Hove, she had suggested a 20mph pedestrian zone and that the city council refused to even consider the idea.

This is gratuitous nonsense.

Firstly, the concept of slowing traffic in residential neighbourhoods was in no way her brainwave.

And secondly, as all councillors must surely know, it is nonsense to simply announce that an area or a single street is suddenly to be a 20mph zone.

Something more concrete has to slow the traffic down.

In the Poets Corner area, the fully-publicised plan of attack (which may have been totally missed by one or two outgoing councillors) was to be, and is being, carried out in two phases.

The first was to put in traffic calming and junction improvements and to monitor what effect these actually would have.

Phase two, now beginning, is to redesign entry points into the area, upgrade the traffic-calming installations and to designate the whole neighbourhood as a 20 mph zone.

The council is working hard to make Poets Corner a safe, lively and pleasant environment and the process is not helped by councillors attempting to make political capital out of other people's hard work.

-David Jones, Mansfield Road, Hove