I DO not believe that the vast majority of my constituents, some of whom wrote to me, have been best served by the way the latest council tax rise was arrived at.

I have written to the leader of all three political parties to complain that their respective unrealistic approaches to selling this year's council budget, particularly by the Tories and Liberal Democrats, has caused the rise in council tax to be more than it should have been.

In particular, there should have been more effort to reach a cross party concensus in using the £3 million windfall monies returned to the council by the District Auditor. Instead of reaching agreement, the Tories and the Liberals attempted to set vastly unrealistic alternative council tax rises of 1.6 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively. This made any accommodation with the Labour Group impossible.

I do hope that next year the major players will see sense when I believe a figure of less than three per cent will be approved as the council tax rise.

Stephen Hesford, Labour MP for Wirral West.