IAGREE with the comments of Councillor Alan Cottam, Conservative spokesman for regeneration on Blackburn with Darwen Council (Letters, January 22), for the reorganisation of the decision-making process by the new executive eight certainly brings into question the democratic nature of any such small body.

It would now appear that the other 54 councillors are a somewhat redundant force. For the executive's decision would appear to put the final word on any matter and for any councillor to turn this around would be rarer than hens' teeth.

Before this executive was set up, your local councillor was the conduit through which decisions could be either altered or amended at the meetings of a fuller council.

However, your local councillor is now more often than not kept in the dark by both the secrecy and the unwillingness of the executive to release information to them.

How, therefore, can your local councillor be expected to do his or her job on behalf of the people in those particular wards?

Perhaps our leaders on the executive would care to make excuses for these failures or explain to the public just how many good local councillors are now able to do the job that we pay both the executive and others to do -- in an open fashion.

I doubt that they will.

P NEWTON (ex-chairman Bank Top Community Association), Ashworth Close, Blackburn.