I READ with some interest the comment section of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph on August 18, referring to "Keeping buses on the roads."

While the larger part is factually correct, one item is not -- and it is a very fundamental item too.

You state: "Now it looks like a lack of cash means a large part, or maybe all, of the council's controlling share in the loss-making undertaking will have to be sold."

One of the requirements of Blackburn Transport's operator's licence (and indeed any other transport company of our size) is that the company maintains almost £500,000 in available cash resources to meet our ongoing commitments.

A minimum of such resources is maintained by this company at all times, and therefore you will understand that we do not suffer from "a lack of cash."

Admittedly, it is only resources over and above this figure that may be applied to financing new vehicles, but we do have a bus modernisation plan, and indeed we are currently in discussions on the specifications for a number of new buses to be introduced next spring at a cost of around £600,000.

These new buses will be built down the road at East Lancs Coachbuilders, helping the local economy.

This will take the total number of low floor buses to 38, pushing us closer to 70 per cent of our commercial operation.

We have plans for further such expenditure each year for the next five years.

In addition to our investment programme, we always keep our eye on the availability of second hand buses, as we do still have some older vehicles in every day service.

We recently saw seven second hand vehicles advertised at what we considered to be a very good price and, after our engineers had run their slide rules over them, we snapped them up.

These are buses that have done low annual mileage, are very well presented and are of a type that we already operate.

The purchase of these has allowed us to increase our low floor easy access fleet to around 60 per cent of our commercial operations well in advance of our investment plans.

It is a measure of the strength of our financial standing that, when we have seen a bargain, we have been able to take advantage of it.

Blackburn Transport's job is to serve the people of Blackburn and Darwen and our latest figures show that over 95 per cent of all our registered bus journeys run reliably and we do exactly what we set out to do.

MICHAEL MORTON, Managing Director, Blackburn Transport, Whitebirk Road, Blackburn.