IT'S difficult to imagine how upsetting it must be to have prostitutes openly plying their trade in the street outside your home.

The idea that your children have to play on pavements amidst kerb crawlers, pimps and what are now euphemistically called "sex workers" is truly horrifying.

Vulnerable groups like the elderly must be equally fearful at having to pick their way through people all too often also associated with drugs and crimes like theft and robbery.

Small wonder, then, that East Lancashire residents like the people of the Stonyhurst Road area of Blackburn, who are at their wits' end, are being encouraged to take the car registration numbers of kerb crawlers.

One resident who has been suffering abuse and threats has offered 200 numbers to police.

Police say they have concentrated on the area and in 12 months increased arrests from kerb crawling from 11 to 71 - more than the total for the whole of Greater Manchester.

But residents say prostitutes are still there, although the council's deputy leader says it takes time and they are making "steady progress."

It would be asking the impossible to expect councillors to rid the borough of the oldest profession in the world.

But they can and must remove prostitutes from residential streets like these - and fast.