Your leading article (Argus February 1) about council tax increases in West Sussex was unfortunately way off the mark by suggesting cost increases for the Crawley Fastway bus project will push up bills.

I can reassure all residents not a single penny of their council tax will be spent on these costs.

Let us try to get Fastway into perspective. The scheme has successfully transformed public transport in the Crawley and Gatwick area, with passenger figures already 40 per cent higher than predicted at this stage of the project.

The project budget increases were due to inflation within the construction industry and delays by the public utilities involving work which needed to be done.

In fact, if we were starting Fastway today, this scheme would come under a new national contract system introduced by the Government, with an automatic sum built in to the budget to cover such potential cost increases.

The County Council has made it crystal clear it will be managing the impact of Fastway from its existing capital programme and not from council tax.

This can be achieved because, in a multi-million programme, stretching over several years there are always schemes which cannot start on time due to various factors such as planning problems or delays in acquiring land.

This is known as "slippage" and gives us the ability to transfer resources between projects, which is a normal practice.

-Henry Smith, Leader of West Sussex County Council, County Hall, Chichester