WITH regret I returned to this town some 20 years ago only to see it vastly deteriorate.

I pass down Preston New Road regularly to be met with the eyesore of neglect. This council seems content with tearing down anything resembling taste.

I feel ashamed to welcome many visitors to my home from abroad and take them into town. I cringe at the squalor we can't escape. I fear the next idiotic project.

Preston has retained and improved their fine buildings, so what on earth drives this town's planners and can some brave person say 'Enough is enough'?

DOREEN MAQUIRE, Revidge Road, Blackburn.

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