I AGREE with Christian Leigh’s letter last week about the sorry state of Northwich.

The council is not concerned with long-term investment; they have a budget each year and they have to keep to it, whether it means squandering large amounts of money. Why else pave the library front and surrounding area and transform a 15ft sq patch with walls to three sides when Northwich crumbles around us? It isn’t going to bring people into the town. I wrote to the council over a year ago concerning the proposed Lifestyle Centre inviting them to view a very efficient example of a swimming pool layout in Brittany, France, to which they replied, ‘we have no funds to travel there’. It’s not just the building costs, but the ongoing maintenance of such a development that matters, which confirms the shortsighted nature of councils as a whole. I do despair that the funding of the Barons Quay area is dependent on another supermarket, over and above the Waitrose supermarket earmarked for the old cinema site, together with a potential over-development of Barons Quay we could be on the road to further disaster.

JACKIE ROBERTS Leftwich