I CAN appreciate that councils might, as they do, expect applicants for planning permission for a new store or such like to stump up the cost of road improvements in the vicinity if consent for their proposed development means traffic will increase.

But what excuse can they have for strong-arming a firm wanting to build a new supermarket into paying for a work of public art as a condition of winning planning approval?

Surely, if a store plan is fit for approval in its own right, it cannot automatically become unfit on planning grounds if the owners do not share the council's desire for aesthetic enhancement of the borough and refuse to fork out for a statue.

So, in dealing with Scandinavian cut-price supermarket chain Netto's application for a new store in Blackburn, have not the council's planning officers a nerve to recommend that it be approved on condition that the firm pays for a new piece of public art?

Are they not effectively holding the company to ransom -- for no valid planning consideration, other than their desire to commission still more sculpture at someone else's expense?