ON reading your article 'Decline and fall of Roman Road' (LET, August 26), I have sympathy with the residents there.

I live on Blackburn's Shadsworth Estate, which is going in the same direction. The Spar shop on Rothesay Road is a no-go area at night. Gangs of youths and girls are drinking outside it and if they are not there, they are outside the community centre.

Drive past in your car and you are liable to have beer cans thrown at it, or if you are walking past you get verbal abuse.

We have had cars set on fire and skips and wheelie bins set alight. We also suffer from nuisance neighbours.

We have security screens which are made up of just wood covering the windows (some security). It is getting so that we are ashamed to tell people where we live.

So come on Blackburn with Darwen Council and the police, get your act together and try to rectify this before it is another Roman Road.

Name and address received.

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