I recently queued for two hours to attend the Waste Recycling Centre.

Motorists were queuing sensibly, and politely merging alternately at the roundabout.

However there was cause for concern. Clearly, delivery drivers, including heavy goods vehicles, destined other than for the tip, were caught up in the queue and suffering delay.

How do we tackle this general problem? Forget a booking system. In next to no time it will be booked solid six weeks ahead. One may as well issue a public notice saying, "Tip closed."

Forget online queue monitoring. It will be like the buffet steward announcing on the train intercom that there is currently no queue at the buffet. In other words, in a minute's time there will be a long queue there.

Forget alternate day attendance. Hardly anyone is trying to visit every single day.

When I arrived inside the facility, I could see the seat of the problem. Fewer than normal skips were available for deposit, and much link-fencing had been erected to enforce social distancing.

No doubt this was set up with the best of intentions. But it is severely restricting the passage-through of vehicles. The queues are not going to subside until the facility can resume near-normal capacity.

Could not these restrictions be relaxed a little? We have seen that in supermarkets people respect social distancing very well, so why do we need so much constraint in the open air? Extending the opening hours is sensible.

I understand that staffing shortage is one of the problems facing the cleansing services. Let us ensure that available staff are deployed as productively as possible, and not ineffectively monitoring booking systems or traffic queues.

Denis McMahon, Basingstoke