LEIGH desperately needs something to put the town on the map and the canal with its crystal clear water is one of our greatest and most underrated and under-used assets.

Reader David Sykes is a keen canal holiday enthusiast and says it's always nice to see developments going ahead to remove industrial eyesores from the landscape. I couldn't agree more.

David is all in favour of improvements to Leigh's canal side, but the current plans seem to suffer from a serious lack of thought. The development shown in the Journal is a lack lustre block of terraced properties not dissimilar to a prison barrack block.

He says: "Surely the developers should be made to come up with a more attractive layout. I think we should be making the canal side a welcoming village type frontage and not perpetuate the old industrial rows concept of which we have a serious overdose already."

He asks if I can give the designers a dig through my column to see if they can come up with something more imaginative? Take it as done!