IN THE second instance in a week, we have residents of an East Lancashire housing estate uniting and taking self-help action to drive out a scourge from their community.

First, it was householders on an estate at Audley, Blackburn, who drew up a hit-list of trouble-makers and hell neighbours and delivered it to the police and the council, demanding action.

Now, people living in the town's Montague area who are fighting back against their streets being turned into a red-light zone.

They are fed up of prostitutes, pimps, kerb-crawlers and the drug dealers who have invaded their estate.

And they have declared war by listing the registration numbers of cars prowling the area and handing them over to the police. One resident has even begun filming kerb-crawlers with a video camera.

This is precisely the sort of response that is needed in the war against crime and anti-social behaviour - that of the community playing its part to help the police, as is so often urged.

But what of the part of the police? The problem of prostitution has plagued this area for two whole years.

Don't the decent, law-abiding people living there deserve a positive response to their concerns and action on the evidence they are providing?

Measures are being taken, the police say.

And they will investigate when residents provide them with information.

A local councillor is assured the force is doing its best.

But if the suspicion is to be allayed that this "best" effort amounts to containment rather than cure - so that the problem is conveniently confined to one area - then it needs to be improved by a ready, visible and far more effective response to the co-operation and testimony the residents are giving them.

These people have, after all, been living with this curse for two long years already.

And unless they get the swift purge they deserve, the danger is that disaffection with their partnership with the police will lead to the wrong sort of self-help - of frustrated people taking the law into their hands.

The ball is in the bobbies' court.

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