The phrase "a lamentable lack of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to express disappointment or regret about the absence of something important or desirable.
Example: "The report highlighted a lamentable lack of resources allocated to education in the region."
Alternatives: "a regrettable absence of" or "an unfortunate deficiency of".
Why?" displayed a lamentable lack of self-awareness – or are his motives a little more complex?
Yet real life seems to show a lamentable lack of respect for systems of psychiatric classification.
On criticism: "There is a lamentable lack of critical debate about contemporary art.
He accused Entwistle of a "lamentable lack of knowledge" about the allegations of child abuse by now well-aired across every media outlet including the BBC.
Furthermore, there is a lamentable lack of transparency of reporting, with the "Materials and Methods" sections of many publications, especially those with high impact factors, not fit for the purpose of evaluating the quality of any reported qPCR data.
Wayne Hennessey was found to have displayed a "lamentable" lack of knowledge about Adolf Hitler and fascism by the Football Association commission which cleared him of making a Nazi salute at a Crystal Palace team-bonding meal in January.
That this is a lamentable lack is brought home in Margate, where many landscapes never shown in this country before have arrived from the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.
Almost exactly a year a go I wrote a MediaGuardian column reflecting on broadcasting's lamentable lack of progress on diversity issues.
There are many things Dieter Helm's book, The Carbon Crunch: How We're Getting Climate Change Wrong - and How to Fix it, does well, such as articulating the urgency and scale of climate change the challenge and the lamentable lack of action at an international level.
She reads Metro on the way to work, so Tom and Matt join forces to patronise her about her lamentable lack of up-to-the-minute knowledge.
The Arsenal manager was not referring to his captain's lamentable lack of leadership in Birmingham but of photographs of the defender emerging from a London bar with a cigarette.
