Regrettably the current road closure at the Sinclair Street/East Clyde Street junction will continue for some time.

The council has sought an extension of the road closure order, as the current one has expired, and, purely to save renewal costs and time, this extension was sought till January 2019.

The council has a duty to protect public safety from the adjacent dangerous building and had no option but to act.

I appreciate the impact the closure is having on residents and local businesses and I know that council officers are working extremely hard to get the property owners, their structural engineers, contractors and scaffolders to commence works to make the building safe as quickly as possible.

This is probably the fourth instance of a dangerous tenement building in the centre of Helensburgh posing a hazard to public safety and the all the consequent disruption that it brings.

Building owners need to start to face up to their responsibilities and literally get their house in order.

With us having such a great spell of dry weather, I have taken the opportunity to walk to work and the state of some of our granite pavements was becoming a real concern with stains and marks everywhere, most notably around bins, benches and bus stops. Many readers would have come to the same view.

Having raised it with officers, it was good to see that by the end of last week, many of the worst patches had been cleaned and our pavements generally were looking much better.

Most of it was done by hand, so well done to council officers and staff for getting the place tidied up.

The cleaning machine’s replacement batteries ,which were on back order, have now been installed, so that should help going forward.

But of course, we should not always looks to others to tidy up after us – we, the public, shops and pubs, create some of the problem in the first place, and maybe we could all do a little more to all take pride in our town.

I CANNOT remember much about the summer of 1976, but this year will certainly live long in the memory with such a prolonged period of great weather. Here’s hoping it’s not another 40 years till we have another summer like this.