IT IS hard to square Blackburn with Darwen Council's slashing opening hours at public libraries and leisure centres to save money with its aim of improving the services by encouraging more people to use them.

How can they if the doors are shut?

This conundrum, brought about by the bid to save more than £500,000 from the leisure budget, is one that is being passed to a special panel of councillors charged with deciding where the cuts will come.

But, as was signalled last month, it could be the private sector which wrestles with the problem of doing it better but cheaper, as firms may be brought in to run some of the services.

Such a notion - in effect, privatisation - would, of course, have been an anathema in the council's Old Labour era, but, we think, users of the town's libraries, leisure centres, sports grounds and so forth don't mind who runs them as long as they are available.

But in grappling with these economies, the new council, which has to live up the claim that its new unitary status will bring improvements for the taxpayers, seems to have set off with the intention of cutting first and seeing afterwards if the situation can be eased.

Yet is this not the way that reductions in services stand to become a fait accompli - as when, for instance, the opening hours of libraries are cut and the door of the Lewis Textile Museum is locked while the position is "reviewed," but, ends up staying unchanged?

Thus, by all means, let the private sector or whoever have a stab at running the leisure services and libraries if they can do it better than the in-house system, but kicking off with a reduced service is not an improvement by any yardstick.

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