I AM saddened to say that last week's lead article revealing that residents of Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield suffer from one of the worst property crime rates in Britain came as no surprise.

In November of last year, I came out of my drive early one morning to collect the Sunday newspapers only to find that vandals had been at work overnight and left an overturned grit bin in the middle of the main road.

One hundred yards down the road, a car had all of its windows broken.

I was unsure whether or not the car belonged to a neighbour, so I called Thames Valley Police. Their response was 'sorry sir but unless you are the owner of the vehicle there is nothing we can do'.

When I suggested that they should at least check to see whether the car was stolen or whether it belonged to a neighbour who should be informed before the contents (which had been left strewn across the back seat) were stolen, the operator became annoyed and hung up!

Not exactly the sort of response I had expected, nor one which is likely to endear members of the public to report a crime or assist the police in future.

That same day, I counted the number of stolen or abandoned cars I passed on the five mile drive between Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield.

There were 14, not including the one I'd reported to the police. The list makes depressing reading: one vehicle by the golf club on the A413 in Gerrards Cross (vandals set it on fire a few days later), one vehicle abandoned on the A40 by the traffic lights in Gerrards Cross (it remained there for weeks), two caravans vandalised and left abandoned in a lay-by outside Wapseys Lane Gypsy site, seven cars and a caravan abandoned in a field by Wilton Park and a further two vehicles left abandoned and vandalised in a lay-by near the M40 in Beaconsfield.

This is by no means unusual. The vehicles in the field by Wilton Park remain there to this day, and a new set of vehicles can be seen abandoned by the side of the A40 in Beaconsfield, Gerrards Cross or Denham on almost a daily basis.

On driving in to Beaconsfield today, I counted two new cars and two caravans abandoned by the side of the road. Why don't the police or the local authority take more rapid action to remove them or to prevent the thefts occurring in the first place?

Undoubtedly, the police and local authority will claim a lack of resources. In which case, perhaps they could explain why it is more efficient to attach a 'police aware' sticker and then wait several weeks for the car to be vandalised, the contents and saleable parts removed, and then set on fire (necessitating the attendance of the police, fire brigade and road cleaning crews) before it is finally taken away to the scrap yard.

I am quite sure that I am not your only reader who is thoroughly dissatisfied with the authorities response to this problem.

Isn't it time we had some positive action from the police and South Bucks District Council?

Andrew D Stoneman, Lower Road, Gerrards Cross