THANK you for your comical look at our new 'Lose the Spare Tyre' campaign in your Leaver at Large column (LET, January 2).

Many of your facts were correct -- we do have thousands of pounds of sponsors prizes to give away. We do want to encourage people to have a healthier lifestyle. We do want to improve transport for everybody. We do have people's well-being at heart. Believe it or not we are quite nice people.

The campaign is being run by Lancashire County Council with the NHS, Blackburn with Darwen Council and many local businesses which have given their time, prizes and money to a campaign which they see as being beneficial.

The campaign aims to encourage a healthier lifestyle, which some people, Eric Leaver included, may not wish to be involved with. That's fine by us. Hopefully, those people will benefit from the millions spent every year maintaining and improving transport across the region by local councils.

We are also uncertain what Eric meant by the phrase "more of the anti-car crankiness that infects our local government policy-makers."

This may refer to the fact that Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen councils have both adopted a balanced transport policy to ensure that both motorists, public transport users, cyclists and pedestrians all receive benefits from the funding and schemes that are introduced across the region.

These policies ensure that all parties benefit. We consider that putting money only into car parking, as Mr Leaver suggested, to be a rather ineffective and unwise method of supporting an entire transport network.

Once again, we would like to thank him for promoting the Lose the Spare Tyre campaign and hope many more local people will join us in a very positive and exciting campaign to improve the lives of people across Lancashire.

Perhaps if Mr Leaver joined the campaign he might consider renaming his column 'Less Leaver at Large.'

HOWERD BOOTH, Group Manager, Information and Marketing Environment Directorate, Business TravelWise, Cross Street, Preston.