IT is a bitter irony that while East Lancashire's major town is embarked on a giant regeneration strategy aimed at making it more attractive to visitors and investors, it gives ever impression of doing the opposite -- by design.

For virtually every main road into Blackburn is choked by lengthy roadworks. And it is on purpose that they are all taking place at once.

It is as if those in charge of making the town attractive have coined the perverse slogan, "Come to Blackburn -- if you can."

And it is infuriating to the hundreds of motorists stuck daily in the jams, held up by temporary traffic lights and surrounded by cones.

Bad news too for the town's traders who see business being diverted to other towns and shopping centres as motorists steer clear of Blackburn's day-long congestion.

Yet, despite the fury and worry that this has created -- and being condemned as "utter madness" by the leader of the council's Liberal-Democrat group -- the town's regeneration supremo, Councillor Ashley Whalley, sees virtue in this "co-ordinated approach."

For, he says, by having all these works done at once, they can be got out of the way before Christmas, ensuring a free flow of traffic to Blackburn town centre during that busy period. The alternative, he maintains, was to have roadworks going on over two years.

But does not this approach and the deliberate disruption it entails actually jeopardise Blackburn's regeneration -- in that it risks a good deal of visiting traffic being deterred for good with Blackburn having added to its reputation of being determined to keep cars out of the town centre?

Apart from that, what of commuters in this equation -- people who daily to work in the town and who spend plenty of money there? Is there no consideration for them? It seems not.

And whatever Coun Whalley says, it would seem to many stuck in these horrendous jams that the "co-ordinated approach" could in any case have been planned much better -- so that much of these lengthy works could have commenced at the start of the school summer holidays and not continued after them and that much more work could be done at nights and weekends.