‘The council is actually run by officers who in turn appoint contractors to deliver services’

• THE substance of your editorial (The mayoral election: a ballot on what we don’t want, Comment, April 25), is mirrored in our council.

An increasing proportion of our services are now controlled, not so much by highly-paid non-elected individuals, but by outsourcing.

The problem is that there is little or no councillor control of the performance of these organisations. The council is actually run by officers who in turn appoint contractors to deliver services.

Yes there are various scrutiny panels but they seem mainly to be talking shops and information to them seems to be from officers marking their own homework, with a very few exceptions.

Unfortunately the residents who are at the receiving end of these services have little chance of redress. All they get is the platitudes of a council officer’s (not councillor) statement that “we would like to apologise” and “lessons have been learned”.

If so, why the repeated problems?

MICK FARRANT, NW5