REGARDING your report (LET, December 30), "New year spruce up to tempt tenants," here is a Labour council in turmoil, with over 70 years' experience of letting houses, admitting failure in its policy.

What a climb down for a socialist council to concede it needs private enterprise in the way of a firm of consultants at a cost of £7,000 to sort their problems out.

Roman Road estate is the "jewel in the crown" of housing expenditure. In fact, it is an estate too far - it was doomed to failure from the outset.

Its layout did not lead to neighbourliness being established - an attitude needed on a new estate.

It placed people - unfortunately those who were less well off in financial terms - in a situation where they were stranded from the main stream on an estate where it was too far to walk and too expensive to travel to town.

Millions of pounds have been pumped into this estate by the taxpayer, but to no avail. Probably the most effective action would have been to blow the rest of the estate away when hundreds of houses were emptied to sell them to the private sector because of the council's inability to manage them.

There has since been refurbishment to a high standard and most sold to owner occupiers.

The millions of pounds that have been poured into an unquenchable sponge would have been better spent on refurbishing the hundreds of private sector houses that have recently been demolished at a cost in excess of £10 million - houses where people wanted to live.

Will these new paid 'experts' be able to solve the enigma?

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.

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