REGARDING your report '£3m for slips and trips' (LET, January 13), about the annual amount claims for accident compensation are costing Lancashire councils, this is peanut money nowadays.

I think the councils should claim it back from the Government, which takes taxes off us for everything we buy, if a person can't walk around our towns with bags full of shopping, without being likely to trip up on badly maintained pavements.

Come to Leeds Road in Nelson and take a look at our back street, it's impossible to walk on the paving stones that are either well down at the front or sticking up at the back.

Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, is right -- we should wake up and ban heavy goods wagons from our back streets.

D McNAMARA (Mr), Leeds Road, Nelson.