WHAT'S the best way to bring more people into Bolton town centre? Promote the features which give it its unique identity - our historic buildings, our open spaces, our rich individual culture?

Or turn it into bog-standard Bolton, packed with the same glass-fronted shops that can be found in every high street and shopping mall in the country?

The answer's obvious isn't it? The latter. Or at least that's what town planners would have us believe.

Take one of the town's most beautiful and historic buildings - the Market Hall. Strip it of all its small, family stall-holders, many of whom have been there for generations, pile it up to the roof with identical retail units, and the crowds will supposedly pour in.

Agora (whoever they might be) tell us their intention is to "restore the Victorian landmark". Who do they think they're kidding? Please, do us a favour - leave it alone! The Market Hall is just that - a hall for a market. That's what it's always been and that's what it still is. You'd wander round the Trafford Centre or Middlebrook for ever without finding anything remotely like the sort of specialist stalls in Bolton's Market Hall. People know that and come from far afield to find them.

You don't beat the Trafford Centre by attempting to copy it. Perhaps the grey suits from Agora should catch the steam train up to Ramsbottom one weekend and see how a town can be regenerated by promoting its difference and individuality, rather than by falling over itself to be like everywhere else.

The Market Hall is one of the few jewels left in Bolton's once rich crown. Agora's plans will ruin it and lead to an even further decline in the commerce and culture of our town centre. We've already lost Churchgate, the canal, and the river Croal - let's hope Bolton's planning committee has enough sense and foresight to give this proposal the treatment it deserves, and throw it out.

Neil Duffield

Gorses Mount,

Bolton