SIR – Bradford Council have been replacing metal grates stolen by the community’s low-lives with non-metal ones for quite some time.

Now Darren Slingsby suggests the Council removes all metal grates from our streets to foil the criminals (T&A, November 10).

Unfortunately, the money raised scrapping these thousands of grates would not offset the cost of replacing them with non-metal ones, so there would be no surplus cash available for community projects listed by Mr Slingsby.

All credit to your correspondent for putting forward his idea, but I’m afraid it’s a non-starter.

David Rhodes, Croscombe Walk, Bradford