As a councillor for Wallington North I write in response to V Raine's letter, Tidying up our side roads, as printed in your September 28 edition.

I agree that the weeds have become prevalent in many roads in this area following the copious amounts of rain that has recently fallen.

Thankfully, this has coincided with the Deep Clean' teams who are in Wallington North at present. The teams commenced their programme in the ward on the September 18 and will be here for the next 13 weeks cleaning the streets.

The Deep Clean initiative is a further development of the co-ordination and joining up' of council services that look after Sutton's streets. The service will be carried out by the existing Street Teams working in each of the areas.

The Deep Clean is an extra service to give each residential road a really good clean. It will include a thorough sweeping of footways and road channels, weeding of back lines, kerbs and tree pits. The teams will also deal with basal growth on trees and cutting of grass verges where we know they are not due to be visited by our grounds maintenance teams. Also highway drains will be emptied during the time that the street teams are working within an area.

COUN BRUCE GLITHEROE Wallington North ward