AMONG all the visionary efforts to regenerate Blackburn town centre and make it a better, brighter place to visit, shop, work, relax and live in, the project nearing completion in old-time Fleming Square stands out as an imaginative gem.

It has entailed transforming the Victorian Exchange Arcade -- actually, Blackburn's first shopping precinct -- and turning it from an almost-forgotten backwater into a base for a chic variety of shops and businesses and a pedestrianised spot with interesting and attractive features where people can relax indoors or outdoors.

It's a showpiece that has taken more than £400,000 to create as the council linked up with the Square's established traders in a redevelopment venture that any town would be proud of

Yet what happens after people put so much time, money and effort into creating an improvement for everyone? Infuriatingly, just a month before the new-look square is due to open, thieves come along and strip a plant bed of the shrubs and grasses put there only recently, leaving it almost empty.

But it is not just the crime itself that maddens. For what is sickening is the contempt that goes with it for the values and efforts of people who put their time, energy and money into making Blackburn a better place.

Old-established Fleming Square trader hairdresser Jeff Stone is offering a £500 reward for information leading to the conviction of the offenders. Let's hope they are not only caught and firmly punished, but also pilloried by the community they have shown such disregard for.