IN the LET of April 22, Mr Beswick first of all urges residents to go and look over both sides of Newfield Drive bridge as this will apparently prove that the council has neglected the ward. In the past, there have also been many letters published in the LET remarking on how dirty Blackburn is.

I applaud Councillor Kay for wanting the borough to have clean streets, but at the end of the day, if you go around any ward, you could easily find similar grot spots of accumulated rubbish and litter.

The one thing the council does does is provide wheelie bins and litter bins and the services to empty them. It will also facilitate the removal of large household waste items if requested.

Furthermore, fast food chains like McDonald's provide numerous litter bins at sites like the services at Junction Four of the M65 and arrange for them to be emptied regularly. So just why is Blackburn dirty?

The answer is simple. Like every city, town or village in the country, Blackburn has a percentage of residents who don't give a damn about their environment, or where they dump stuff or drop litter.

Householders persist in putting rubbish out in bin bags often days before the collection is due. They happily dump sofas, beds, cookers etc in back streets hoping someone else will report it to the council for it to be disposed of.

Folk will discard fag packets and pop cans on the pavement or into bushes. People are only too happy to eat their purchases from the drive-thru before opening their car doors, depositing their wrappings under their cars, then driving off.

There is no excuse for all this. This is no fault of the council.

Blackburn is not dirty. Just some of its residents!

MALCOLM BURY, Darwen.