AS a long-standing resident of Worcestershire, past chairman of the Swan Theatre Company and member of the Theatre's Board, I have been saddened by reading yet another serious risk to the Swan and by the city's apparent inability to grasp the nettle and solve this cultural dilemma once and for all.

Apart from the silent Regional Arts Council, whose weird and perhaps, politically-correct criteria for defining and funding what they insist is "art" has been at the back of many a Swan crisis, all parties to the argument have pertinent, valid and powerful things to say.

The Swan is the only producing theatre in Worcestershire, resourcing playwrights, amateurs and children's theatre although it might be expensively over-staffed for what it achieves.

Surely it is now time for representatives of all these stakeholders (including the Regional Arts Council) to cease fighting their partisan corners and get together in a formal setting to thrash this issue out.

Money is undoubtedly required and always will be. But it should be there to fund viable answers to the problems.

In the short term, how does one keep the Swan alive - and in the medium/long term, how does one fund a future, viable alternative to the Swan and what it provides for the bulk of Worcester's citizens?

Perhaps, at last, a local MP or someone on the city council will now have the courage and foresight to formally set up this wide-ranging committee and find some answers before it's too late.

DAVID MALLET,

Tonbridge, Kent.