HAVING just returned to work from a six-month maternity break one of my first tasks was to remember to send you a letter regarding Blackburn Borough Council car parks.

Being a new mum is no easy task and every car journey becomes a real chore with pram, pram bag, handbag, coats, toys and your car seat that 'clicks' on to your pram.

As a self-confessed shopaholic my maternity leave was viewed as one long shopping expedition, exploring the wonders of shopping centres throughout Lancashire.

Mother and baby parking enables you to safely remove your child from car and into the pram, hopefully without waking them up. If you pram is a 'travel system' you remove the full car seat which clicks directly on to your pram.

If no mother and baby space is available this is an impossible task because the car next to you will always be too close!

People obviously don't realise that sun shades and 'baby on board' signs actually mean that you have a baby in the car.

Whenever I have had the opportunity over the last six months to question why the driver of the other vehicle has parked so close to my car that I can't get my baby and baby car seat back into the car, I have received abuse and the standard 'you should be in the mother and baby bit then!'

Well guess what? Blackburn is the only council which doesn't provide mother and baby parking, however there are plenty of disabled spaces which appear to be abused just as much as any mother and baby space is.

Out of all our shopping centres in Lancashire, Blackburn is the most difficult to use because of the lack of mother and baby spaces.

Needless to say, my shopping expeditions very rarely included Blackburn. They can spend as much money as they like on concrete 'cotton wool' balls on Church Street but ultimately if they are making it difficult for people to shop, people aren't going to come.

STEPHANIE MATTHEWS, Sutton Street, Feniscowles, Blackburn.