What on earth is happening to local authority housing in Blackburn, especially on the once-pleasant Livesey estate?

Houses are meshed-up or cannot be let and the flats and maisonettes look like a ghetto, with windows and doors boarded over.

These houses are not empty - most have somebody living in them behind this grotty facade. Once, people were vetted before being given the keys to property. Now, it seems that any down-and-out can be given a flat or maisonette to smash up and then move on somewhere else, or stay with it falling down about them.

What happened to the council's care and repair policy? Do our councillors and the local estate office not know about these properties, or is it that, because they don't have to live in them, they don't care? Either repair them or pull them down before they fall down and help the decent people who have to live among this despair and disrepair.

I read that the money from 'right to buy' could be used. Is the Livesey estate to be forgotten again as usual?

The council seems to be doing wonderful things on other estates such as Galligreaves and Bennington Street. Are we to be Blackburn's next Roman Road?

Come on, Livesey councillors, do something, or at least come and look around and help give us back our pride in our environment.

Livesey resident (Full name and address received)

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