COUNCILLOR Barry Mackenzie-Williams (You Say, November 2) is wrong when he lays the blame for the Swan Theatre crisis at the door of its management.

He claims that they defied West Midlands Arts in 1998 by continuing as a producing theatre.

If, as he claims, he has read the McKinnon Report, he will know that in fact, WMA asked the Swan to pursue a policy of "producing, presentation and participation".

Which is exactly what it has done very successfully over the last three years. Since then, WMA has been waiting for the city council to show its commitment to an Arts Centre for Worcester with a producing capacity. It is the city council's lack of management skills that is frustrating WMA, not the theatre's.

The council would like us to think of this crisis as a choice between "vital services" and a theatre. It is time that Councillors McKenzie-Williams, Inman, Lankester et al stopped regarding the Arts as a luxury, and realised that they, too, are vital services which bring much needed investement and tourism to the city.

The councils of two comparable cities - Oxford and Canterbury - have had the vision to realise this, and lead their cities into bids for the European Capital of Culture, knowing that their city economies would be boosted by millions as a result.

Worcester badly needs leaders with similar vision. Mr Lankester wants us to believe that a closed theatre will mean bus passes for pensioners. Not much point in that if the city isn't worth catching a bus into in the first place.

PETER WILD, Worcester.