When I came to live in Hove 13 years ago, parts of the town were squalid, dirty and neglected. Since the merger with Brighton things have changed dramatically.

Portland Gate, that blight on the landscape in Portland Road, has been replaced by two blocks of flats which are of high standard architecturally.

The old Colman's site in Tamworth Road has been replaced by a row of modern houses in Ruskin Place and Stoneham Park has been transformed from a neglected ruin into an open space where children play in safety and drug dealers and addicts have been largely banished.

Voice of The Argus (September 13) was right in saying the old Hove Borough Council was hardly independent as most of its services (such as education) were run, and not always well, by East Sussex County Council from Lewes.

The same was true of social services.

No, the city of Brighton and Hove has not yet built heaven on earth and has plenty of faults but where would Hove be today without Brighton?

A crumbling backward-looking backwater on the Sussex coast.

-Rev John Webster, Hove