AFTER blighting Blackburn town centre for years and spoiling the many bold efforts for its regeneration, run-down Lord Square may get millions of pounds for its first major facelift for almost 30 years. That appears to be good news, and we await with keen interest the fuller details of the scheme.

Although only bare outlines are available - with suggestions that new shops could be built, existing ones refurbished, lifts and escalators installed and the open-space square roofed over - it does seem that the shopping precinct's new owners Reit Asset Management are coming good on the assurances they gave when they took over. The company has carried out a viability scheme for the square's improvement and found a demand by household-name retailers for new shops, suggesting action could at last be realised. But it need never have been so long delayed.

It is looking like a victory for this newspaper's campaign to get positive progress on this blot on the townscape and for all the people who have wanted action over Lord Square. And the council's regeneration supremo, Andy Kay, is right when he says that with the recent multi-million-pound redevelopment of nearby Church Street and exciting work on renewing the classical Pavilions buildings there, Lord Square must now be the priority.

Let's see it happen.