The closure of The Case Is Altered pub along Old Redding is lamentable and a dismal indictment of the borough but ultimately a loss for everyone. Perhaps the owners should have worked harder to attract target markets, such as setting the pub up as hub for dog walkers (plenty venture out in the vicinity).

If Harrow is, as it seems, an area where nobody is interested in healthy exercise, then the closure of the car park coupled with depriving the pub of the roadside parking bays could only achieve one thing: signal the death knell of The Case Is Altered.

The council’s vaunted claim to promote active travel seems hollow when there has been no investment or maintenance of the by-ways and they are not fit for purpose. (Instead, the council prefers to spend taxpayers’ cash on a army of polluting petrol-powered leaf blowers). The footpath running from Oxhey Lane roundabout to Old Redding (a bit further up from the pub) is, for most of the year, an impassable, waterlogged muddy bog.

One would have expected a council so apparently keen to get everyone walking would have improved the Harrow Weald viewpoint and spent a penny on a gravel walkway to it and a few picnic benches. But instead there is just car park access, cementing the perception that Harrow is being paved into a grey, soulless ghetto where no one ever leaves their cars.

Dave Degen

Whippendell Road, Watford