WITH reference to the recent concerns expressed about funding for the Darwen area of Blackburn with Darwen Unitary Authority, may I make the following comments:

Surely it is understandable that deprived wards should receive more support than the more affluent ones. The latter, nevertheless, need to be kept up to standard or they will begin to deteriorate.

A view has been expressed that the interests of Darwen residents will be improved if and when regional government is instituted, since it will bring local government "nearer to the people." This is simply not true.

At present, a borough councillor represents anything between 1,000 and 3,000 electors and the second tier (county) councillor represents between 10,000 and 15,000. The variation depending upon the rural or urban nature of the ward.

Local government reorganisation, which will inevitably follow regionalisation, must mean an increase in the electors served by ward members, since absorption of peripheral boroughs will not be carried out by simply aggregating the councillors currently serving them.

A more serious dilution of representation occurs with the second tier, however, since county councils will be replaced by regional assemblies with 35 members taking responsibility for seven million people. Each member will have a 'constituency' of 200,000 electors!

It is my opinion that regionalisation rather than bringing local government nearer to the people will have the opposite effect and will merely accelerate centralisation and give even tighter control of the purse strings to Whitehall.

COUN CHARLES WARKMAN, Hob Green, Mellor.