THE leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council's Conservative group has said a permanent memorial to the coronavirus pandemic in the borough should be paid for through crowdfunding.

Cllr John Slater said the cash should not be paid for by the town hall or come out of the 'stretched' Covid recovery budget.

Earlier this week the borough's Labour lead Cllr Mohammed Khan proposed the memorial to commemorate both the victims of Covid-19 and those who worked on the front line or volunteered to help others.

Cllr Slater said: "I welcome the idea but the memorial should be crowdfunded, not paid for by the council.

"The council should launched an appeal to crowdfund it and certainly not take it out of the already stretched Covid recovery budget."

The proposal was welcomed by Blackburn MP Kate Hollern and the Bishop of Blackburn the Rt Rev Julian Henderson.

Pauline McLoughlin, from Darwen, who launched a petition in July 2020 signed by thousands of people calling for a Covid memorial after losing her mum Sheila Hibbitt to the pandemic, said: “This is absolutely brilliant."

Darwen East Liberal Democrat Cllr Paul Browne said: “My view is they could spend the money better than putting a memorial up to Covid victims.”

The council has launched an online survey asking for residents' opinions on what the memorial should be.

Cllr Khan said: “No decisions have been made yet about how the pandemic will be commemorated in Blackburn with Darwen.

"We’re at the very early stages of public consultation – and it’s really pleasing to see that residents are taking a few minutes to complete our survey to give us their views.

“No budget has been allocated for this, as we don’t know yet what sort of memorial residents want.

"We anticipate that some of the funding could come through internal budgets as part of normal activity. Crowdfunding is another option that we certainly can consider, but it’s important that we first listen to what our residents want before making decisions about how to fund a memorial.”