Professor Peter Collins a leading gambling industry academic is also quoted in the parliamentary report: "If you put a large entertainment complex, including a casino, in the centre of a town, you will suck huge amounts of money out of the leisure economy in that town. I think that is something which not only is undesirable in itself, but will clearly lead to all sorts of objections from all sorts of businesses to downtown casinos."

We feel this evidence confirms the validity of our four-year campaign against the Blackpool proposals as more than 20,000 people live or work within a short walk of the sites earmarked for these regional casinos with more than 200,000 residents a 20 minute bus or tram ride away. Thousands of jobs will be displaced in to the casinos with a ring of boarded up premises unable to compete with the slot machine funded facilities in the casinos.

Cllr Steven Bate