CAN I make a point to the readers who constantly knock the fact that Darwen is to get a state-of-the art health centre at least.

I am one of those mothers who will supposedly not be able to access the new site with my pram! Absolute tosh -- I don't walk the two-and-a-half miles it would take me to get to the present health centre in Union Street now. I come in my car or on the bus, or get a lift if I am too ill!

I am pregnant at present and receive maternity care from my overworked midwife, in what can only be called a broom cupboard at the centre centre. There is room for a trolley/bed, sink, desk and nothing else. We don't have a monitor to look at the developing foetus as they do at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, because there isn't the room for one. The room doesn't even have a window.

And why do you think this is? -- because the current health centre is too small! Do these knockers of the scheme not realise that it is bursting at the seams with people treated in what can only be described as storage cupboards.

I personally will find no hardship, especially if the buses are diverted to the new site, in attending a brand spanking new health centre -- complete with state of the art facilities -- like those the people of Blackburn already enjoy at Queen's Park.

Can anyone seriously hold their hands up and say they walk all the way from their own home to the health centre when they are ill and in need of a doctor's care? Those who do will probably have had to negotiate a number of hills to get there in the first place -- after all Darwen is packed full of them.

And, by the way, for those people who are coming up with half-baked suggestions such as splitting the site in Union Street between the former Social Services building and the existing centre, the Social Services building is already being used by the health centre staff who dodge fire engines, police cars and other traffic as they cross from building to building.

Another suggestion has been to convert the former Technical School. Hello? Has anyone noticed this is on a hill and has a number of steps leading up to the front door -- oh, and the fact that it is not big enough and doesn't have a car park. But, hey, why let these minor details get in the way?

For once, can we just please have something we deserve that will attract the best health professionals without a small minority of moaning Darreners to put a spanner in the works? Think back to the 1970s when the Union Street centre opened -- didn't we have similar objections to local surgeries being centralised?

Is it any wonder we have trouble attracting major names to open stores in the town with the attitudes we have seen to an £11million gift horse?

I have always been proud to call myself a Darwener, but am seriously questioning the attitude of some of my fellow townsfolk. I seriously think they care more about a sign for a motorway service station or lighting Darwen Tower than they do about achieving quality health care for us all. But, then, again if the new centre was being built in Blackburn...

J CONLON, Whitehall, Darwen.