SIR — Like D Hooper in her letter (Free Press November 16), I too would be willing, in principle, to pay an additional £50 or so per year to retain West Somerset Council as an independent district council with the remit to concentrate on the best interests of West Somerset.

But, and it's a very big but, is the council in its current form worthy of our support?

I know that there are many district councillors who work very hard indeed on our behalf, but a scrutiny of many of the decisions made in recent years and the quality of financial management makes me wonder if the district council should be propped up with yet more of our money.

The council is fortunate that it can attribute its impending financial meltdown to the general financial malaise affecting this country, but it would seem that very questionable or risky financial decisions with long reaching implications were being made before said financial crisis.

True, the income it receives, whether from us or from the Government, is far too low for it to be able to provide the services required to support such a relatively low but widely spread population, but this is not a new situation, nor is it an uncommon one in the south west.

It is an issue that should have been resolved years ago. If it had, then the cuts that our community is facing would have not been necessary.

However, the fact remains that, for whatever reason, this overall funding issue was not resolved and, in conjunction with other problems, made the district council's collapse a matter of 'when' but never 'if'.

I note that "there is no process nationally prescribed to deal with such a situation". Perhaps it's about time that the Government stopped adopting the naïve optimism of Mr Micawber, apparently trusting 'that something would turn up', and create a suitable process.

As long ago as 2007, the district council had the distinction of being one of the worst performing district councils in the UK, so surely that would have been the time for the Government to start considering the implications of, and making plans for, the inevitable meltdown?

Before I would be prepared to help bail out the failing district council, I would want to be very certain that I was saving something actually worth saving and which, after being saved, had the necessary strengths to survive.

There is absolutely no point whatsoever in saving West Somerset Council from its impending crisis only for another one to appear on the horizon.

Without assurances that a rescued council and its executives would be more accountable and would listen more to the grassroots, I remain unconvinced that a public bail-out would be anything other than a stay of a long overdue execution and a waste of our money, which none of us can afford.

P Davies,

Queens Road,

Minehead.