BUSINESSES, service providers and architects should be warned of an important date in 2004, when anyone providing goods and services will, where reasonable, have to remove, alter or avoid any obstacles that prevent access for people with disabilities under the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.

Places include shops, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, hairdressers, banks, local authorities and government departments providing a service public or private.

People with access and mobility problems don't want service providers to wait until 2004 before making any adjustments and many are already choosing to alter their premises.

This is a sensible approach, as with foresight many changes can be incorporated into routine maintenance.

The people benefiting from the act are not only the disabled people but the elderly, parents with pushchairs and people carrying heavy shopping -- there are now more than one in four people with an access or mobility problem.

There are 8.5million disabled people in the UK, with a collective spending power estimated at more than £45billion a year.

Although problems with access and mobility are slowly being given priority and decreasing, as a wheelchair user myself I am wondering if we be treated as second class citizens (once again) when the Queen visits Preston during her Jubilee celebrations.

Perhaps now in the year 2002 we will be excepted as equal citizens (now Preston is a city) will all the access problems be removed to enable us to for the first time to have equal rights.

Join in the celebrations as an equal and not hidden at one side, assuming that the Queen doesn't want to see us or us see her.

This is the first time she will visit Preston as a city, let us show her we are a forward-thinking city, a city to be proud of. Showing Preston as a city that puts access and its disabled citizens as a priority enabling everyone to join in the Jubilee celebrations as equals.

John Coxhead, Bristol Avenue, Leyland.