I attended a meeting of the environment, transport and sustainability cabinet on Brighton and Hove City Council earlier this month, and was appalled.

Most of the councillors and council officials turned up in scruffy T-shirts, jeans and open shirts. They mumbled into their microphones and the public could scarcely hear the proceedings.

Several neatly-dressed members of the public presented petitions, but I felt they were hardly listened to.

A Conservative councillor for Wish Ward made an eloquent appeal pleading for streets in his ward to be included in a review.

When the chairman was addressed with this, he commented that the Conservative administration had not addressed the problem for four years, and that he saw no reason for the present administration to do so – hardly constructive.

Similar eloquence from a Labour councillor was also met with intransigence, and I wondered why there was so much indifference.

Several councillors and council officials left before the agenda was completed, their priorities seemingly elsewhere.

When I recall the dignified and business-like atmosphere of previous meetings in the chamber at Hove Town Hall, I am concerned the city’s transport problems may not be treated with the independent serious consideration it deserves.

I pray this isn’t so.

Ken Beard, Saxon Road, Hove