LOOKING at the picture on your 'People' page, headed 'Double Success' (LET, January 28), my first impression was that Blackburn housing chiefs were celebrating a 'Gotcha' award.

Yet, you have carried no reports about flying saucers landing, so one wonders where the aliens came from to form the 'independent judging panel' which gave the council's housing department a Charter Mark award. It's obvious they never saw the real housing in Blackburn.

But the state of housing in the town is no laughing matter. In fact, it is a disastrous shambles - thanks to the Labour council's inability to understand the problem and grasp it by the horns. It is of little concern to the council tenants and residents in the private sector how council employees perform if they are not delivering the goods. A council with hundreds of empty houses which it hasn't a clue what to do with and enormous rent arrears and losses on voids means millions of pounds of taxpayers' money going down the drain.

Council estates have fallen into such a state of disrepair that £140 million is needed to save the situation and there are 20,000 unfit houses in the private sector, with the total increasing.

They mess about doing 'block' schemes which, when complete, might be an improvement visually, but many remain unfit, awaiting further grant aid to make the insides habitable.

The only highspot on housing in Blackburn that the council can take credit for is its highly efficient care and repair agency, looking after some of the elderly and the disabled.

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.