IN REPLY to Coun Sue Reid's catalogue of improvements which Darwen has received (Letters, February 26), we who elect councillors are interested in the future, not the past.

She speaks of Hardman Way and Bridge Street, but this work was planned under my chairmanship and included landscaping the old mill site off Redearth Road, the pedestrianising of Bridge Street, the buying of old properties to make the Foundry Street car park, the purchase of the old Olympia Cinema before the county would take on the highway and bridging the river.

All this, however, was a generation ago.

School Street was dedeveloped under private enterprise after years of delay by the Labour council which failed to knock down the old Co-op - to protect Blackburn's shops, one thinks.

The Christmas lights, all 50 yards of them, came after my letter of last November and the improvements to the market hall were three years later. The present so-called offices in the town hall have been promised for two and a half years.

Coun Reid's praise for the bus station and shelters proves she never uses them. They are one-sided shelters open to wind and rain, while Blackburn's shelters have protection on four sides and a resting bar. The bus station is badly planned.

Coun Reid must be hard pushed if she has to quote developments of 20 years past. But let us make a start for the future - we want all the pavements round the town centre properly paved.

In my letters, I attempt to write for Darwen and not for a party.

TOM HARDMAN, Rectory Close, Darwen.

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