WORK is to begin on improving Blackburn's rundown Lord Square -- but council bosses and traders today insisted it was still not enough.

Owners Standard Life have moved after months of criticism over the site, which links the shopping centre to the newly pedestrianised Church Street.

Town centre leaders today praised the decision to start improving the square, parts of which date back to the 1950s.

But critics who backed the Lancashire Evening Telegraph campaign for the square to be re-built said the centre's owners still needed to do more. Fencing has been erected around the square's old lift shaft which used to link the square to the former Cavendish nightclub in preparation for the start of work.

Tiles on the column will be replaced and cleaned up. Other walls in the square will also be cleaned up and painted. Tiles elsewhere on the square will be cleaned up to rid them of the moss which has gathered over them in recent years.

A new under-cover seating area is being created in the middle of the square on what used to be the bandstand.

No cost on the project, which will not require planning permission, has been given.

Arnold Wilcox-Wood, manager of the shopping centre, said: "We are very pleased to be able to carry out these improvements to the square. It is an important part of the shopping centre and we want it to look as good as possible."

The refurbishment work comes nearly two years after the centre's owners, Standard Life, pulled the plug on massive plans for revamp Lord Square. It is believe they had planned to spend £18million on a rebuild project, two models for which had been shown to excited councillors from Blackburn with Darwen Council.

Instead, the firm said they would carry out minor improvements. The works then proved to just be blacking out the windows of empty shops.

Council leader Bill Taylor said: "This is a step in the right direction."

Coun Andy Kay, executive member for regeneration, said: "This is good news but I am not sure it is enough to lift Lord Square to the level we want."

But Coun Edward Harrison, who helped compile a Conservative Party report into Blackburn's town centre earlier this year which highlighted all the town's faults, said: "A lot more needs doing than just this, much much more.

"It needs to come down because it just isn't a good part of town."

"This is a start though, and I think it is in part thanks to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph."

Today, Ronnie O'Keeffe, president of the Blackburn and District Chamber of Trade, said: "Arnold keeps us fully informed of what is happening and while they haven't got the millions of pounds needed to do everything we had hoped for, it is good to see some work being carried out."

In February, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph called for action to be taken in Lord Square as fears grew that the square's appearance could wreck the impact of the new £2million pedestrianised Church Street. Business leaders called for Lord Square to be pulled down.

Doug Chadwick, chairman of the Blackburn Civic Society, and Blackburn fashion designer Wayne Hemingway, called for the existing buildings to be repaired and improved because they represented an excellent example of 1960s' architecture.