DEAR EDITOR - I feel it necessary to respond to the condescending letter from Sam Johnston of the South Birmingham Mental Health Trust in which he comments on the letter from Benefits Agency worker Lisa Cochrane concerning the removal of security screens in benefit offices.

As a BA worker myself, who has spent the last three years working as a visiting officer, meeting customers in their own homes, I am sure that Ms Cochrane in common with all other BA staff is fully aware that the vast majority of people suffering from mental illness pose no danger to BA staff or anyone else for that matter, as is indeed the case with the vast majority of our customers, who appreciate that we are only doing our job in what can at times be difficult circumstances.

However, this does not alter the fact that a small minority of customers are violent, or potentially so, and the BA employee on the front line does not always know this until the individual concerned chooses to throw a chair or a fist at them.

Frightening and upsetting as this can be, if there is a screen between them and their assailant that is the extent of the problem. But, if the screens are removed, as the current BA management seem intent on doing, then the consequences may be considerably more serious, more painful and more permanent.

The politically correct in society, such as Mr Johnston, Alistair Darling, and others, who are obsessed with the "rights" of the individual, including the maladjusted and potentially violent members of society, do not seem to give a damn about the rights of the poor souls who have to deal with these individuals face to face for a salary which in many cases is less than the benefits which they are paying out.

I trust that those who are insisting on the removal of security screens in the new benefit offices, are prepared to stand up and take personal responsibility when one of the BA employees is possibly killed or seriously injured as, I fear, will inevitably be the case.

Assaults on BA staff are on the increase and a security guard in London was recently stabbed by one of our customers, and a few years ago a visiting officer in Telford was murdered.

In my view it is little more than politically correct lunacy to deliberately remove security screens, and thus increase the risk that all BA staff routinely accept as part of their job.

Susan C Holbeche,

Beehive Close,

Catshill,

Bromsgrove.