IT'S true that Ribble Valley Council is a fairly small local authority in a comparatively well-off area.

The borough does not suffer the health and deprivation problems of other parts of East Lancashire which put them among the worst in the country.

And it does not have street after street of Victorian housing in dire need of demolition or major renovation to bring it up to acceptable 21st century standards.

But it does have its own housing crisis - prices so high that young people just cannot afford to get on the housing ladder without leaving the area where they were brought up.

To help them and families on low incomes, Ribble Valley Council wanted to set up a Private Finance Initiative to build 200 homes which could be sold or rented to local people whose options were homelessness or moving away.

Similar partnership schemes are being used all over the country.

But the government has turned down Ribble Valley's bid, saying there was no guarantee that the authority would survive local government reorganisation and it has no previous PFI experience.

Both reasons sound spurious.

If the second applied generally, no authority would ever have got a PFI scheme off the ground. And it's certain that even if the council disappeared, the problem would not.