ALARM Bells have been ringing for some time now, but I can only conclude that someone put a muffler on it as no-one appears to have heard it! With headlines like 'Doubt over market' and 'Plans to knock down the Dome' showing what a complete lack of vision there is coming from the town hall, it is now time to take some bold decisions.

Like the £200,000 apparently set aside for a pool on Sandyland promenade, this amount of money would be better spent on upgrading Bubbles, which apparently needs £179,000 capital injection. Why not roof over the outdoor pool and add more slides, flumes and chutes making it a tropical water paradise?

As for the Dome, turn it into a heritage centre, it could be our very own Millennium Dome!

We need these upgraded indoor attractions, as for Sandyland Promenade it just needs a decent play area, the Waterfall, Sunny Slopes and various rockeries looking after properly, that is, working, grass cut and bedding plants.

As for Lancaster Market move it back to the bus station as part of the refurbishment of this area, it would look better if it could have a glass roof like St Nicholas Arcade, failing that put it into the old Co-op building on New Street but, it must be single floor trading as this experiment of a double decker market on its present site had failed.

But we must act now, not in six months' time when attractions have closed down and more stalls have gone.

Stephen Jones

Sunningdale Ave

Hest Bank

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.