AS I read Rosalind Train's article, "Highway cash cuts put town on road to ruin" (LET, June 19), a smile crossed my face and no doubt Adrian Shurmer's too. Is this the pot calling the kettle black, I asked myself?

For the people who wasted nearly half a million pounds on traffic calming in Hyndburn to cry 'criminal neglect' over a further reduction in funding for Hyndburn roads this year is ironic.

Perhaps, Coun George Slynn and Coun Ian Ormerod, it was criminal incompetence to devote so much money on an unvalidated and in many areas, (not all) unnecessary traffic-calming programme?

What little money there now is for roads has to account for the increased maintenance burden of traffic calming and the huge road colouring and painting programme, before a hole is repaired.

If you're now saying that you did not understand the implications of your earlier action and did not secure additional funds for its maintenance, well, the criminal neglect may lie closer to home.

PHILIP CONGDON, Hindle Fold Lane, Great Harwood.

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