A FULL page advert taken out in The Northern Echo reading “Retail park will be the death of your town centre” relating to Peterlee is true as it’s happened and is happening elsewhere all over the country.

To be honest, with our old towns with massive rates and poor, inadequate parking that you have to pay for, what do councils expect?

Our population is growing by the day.

Go to Teesside Park for instance, or Morrisons, Sainsbury’s or Tesco, you can get parked, get your shopping and get away home.

If you go to Darlington, or Bishop Auckland etc it takes ages to find a parking place and when you go into the town you wonder why you bothered.

Unlike Newcastle, where there are other things to fill your day, our towns are ghosts of their former selves, miserable places where you fight to get parked, pay a fee, then walk past umpteen boarded up premises, and come out depressed.

Then you have to fight through the inadequate roads system to get out of the place.

Our councils are 100 per cent to blame for not plugging the holes before the ship started to sink.

John Cumberland, Rushyford