I HAVE lived in Andover all of my life, over 50 years, and was recently telling the young people who I work with about how Andover was when I was a lot younger.

You had the Co-op department store where I can remember my mum ordering coal, Carruthers market down behind the old bus station.

You could spend all day at the open air swimming pool, Lynn’s Arcade was a normal hang out on a Saturday.

I could go on.

Andover town today is a joke and now we hear M&S is possibly going. What’s going there? Another pound shop or mobile phone shop?

This town has expanded so much over the past few years yet the town centre just does not live up to expectations.

No wonder everybody shops out of town.

With so many empty units on the Walworth Industrial Estate, you can’t tell me there isn’t room for improvement, places for kids to go and do things instead of committing crime. Come on council, move with the times or else this will become a ghost town.

Lesley Hyde, Nestor Close, Andover.