THERE must be an awful lot of work out there.

We want to hard landscape our front garden and extend the steps as my wife has limited mobility.

So far we have rung at least 12 companies.

Some haven’t returned our calls and some have said they will call back to arrange a site visit.

Of the others, five have visited to see the site. Two have given verbal quotes but not backed it up in writing (email acceptable). Two have gone away to work out a price and never been heard from again.

One gave a reasonable quote (backed with email confirmation) but could not give a couple of addresses where they have done similar work over three years ago so we could visit and see how it has weathered.

So the economy must be much stronger than I thought when so many firms have so much work that they don’t even follow up leads.

I have found another three firms to contact over the coming week and hopefully we will find a suitable one from them.

Jim Hutchinson, Witton Gilbert