WE are not surprised that so many people want to save the Community Health Council.

The council which is due to be abolished under new government NHS legislation, has received hundreds of letters and calls of support from local people.

The CHC say they are being abolished because they had done their job too well "always putting patients first".

Certainly their work campaigning for better mental health care, community care and ethnic health, has been excellent.

And their usefulness in helping thousands of Bolton patients to complain about unsatisfactory treatment by the NHS is incalculable.

If Bolton people want to help, they should write to their MP asking that the proposed legislation which goes before parliament in the New Year should be stopped.