BLACKBURN Museum and Art Gallery is described in the 1995/96 Times guide as "a magnificent arts and crafts building, opened 1874, containing treasures bequeathed by cotton-rich patrons from the area's industrial heyday: paintings, manuscripts, books, coins, Japanese prints, icons and ceramics, East Lancashire Regiment collection and South Asia gallery."

Blackburn's museum houses wonderful treasures that can never be replaced. Such an asset belonging to our town should feature prominently in the "Plan for Blackburn, the Way Ahead."

I would have expected plans for using this asset to attract tourists to the town, but what are the council's plans for the future?

Apparently, it plans savage and disproportionate cuts in the museum's budget - so severe that even the safe-keeping of Blackburn's treasures may be put at risk.

The council has recently succeeded in revitalising King George's Hall. Cannot we see our museum and art gallery similarly treated?

We need vision from our councillors to promote our assets and ensure that the next generation can be handed their inheritance intact.

PAMELA SIMON, Beech Bank, Dukes Brow, Blackburn.

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