I AM writing in reference to your story Reality of life in the Fens Cambs Times January 22. This first Director of Community Engagement, Mike Davey, has taken one year to find out what we in Fenland have known for two decades. I, and others, have been

I AM writing in reference to your story 'Reality of life in the Fens' Cambs Times January 22.

This first Director of Community Engagement, Mike Davey, has taken one year to find out what we in Fenland have known for two decades.

I, and others, have been writing to district and county councils over many years, trying to get equality of services and conditions for Fenland, and south Fenland. Services which the rest of Cambridgeshire take for granted.

This area is in fact treated as the 'Third World' of Cambridgeshire, some of us have to make round trips of 20 miles to visit a waste recycling centre, the same for leisure services and the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

As for public transport, for people wanting to go out in the evenings, it is more then scarce - it does not exist.

It is stated one in five households in Fenland are without access to a vehicle; can you imagine their difficulty to make a 20-mile round trip to use the railways.

Villages around each of Fenlands four market towns should be able to access the facilities those towns have, where Chatteris is concerned there is nothing for them to use; in fact some of the villages are better equipped than Chatteris.

The director also tells us something else we all know. Fenland people can also expect to die at a younger age.

Maybe that was due to all the travelling we have to make to get to a hospital with an inpatient bed.

However will soon change, we Fenland folk have fought for six long years to get that rectified; and by mid 2011 our inpatient beds will be back on the Doddington site where they belong.

Another reason for Fenland people dying at an earlier age than the rest of Cambridgeshire could be because of the state of the rural roads.

REG WENN

Via e-mail