REPAIRS have been promised to a town centre road after engineers found a way of patching it up without putting historic Clitheroe Castle at risk.

Lancashire County Council said repairs to Parson Lane had been held up because the normal way of digging up roads - with a pneumatic drill - would have caused vibrations strong enough to rock the Norman keep.

Now the authority has found a way of repairing the road surface without putting the town's heritgae at risk.

Repairs to the road have been complicated by the fact that there is concrete underneath the bitumen road surface.

The county council has been trying to to get rid of concrete roads and replace them with streets that have rubble and aggregate as their base.

But to do that they have to use pnematic drills to dig up the concrete - something engineers warned could make nearby Clitheroe Castle unstable if they did it in Parson Lane. But now they have found an alternative covering which won't wear out so quickly on the concrete, so it doesn't need to be dug up.

Road surfaces with concrete underneath tend to wear out more quickly, said a spokeman for Lancashire County Council.

He said: "There are very few roads left in Lancashire made from concrete with another layer put on top.

"Repairs have been due in Parson Lane, but we have been trying to find a better solution for Parson Lane which wouldn't involve massive disruption to the town centre.

"Drilling up the concrete, as well as causing problems for the town centre traffic, could have damaged nearby buildings such as the castle.

"We have now found an alternative covering which won't wear out so quickly on the concrete which we hope to put down later this year.

"We have spent a lot improving roads in the Ribble Valley area."

Clitheroe councillor Mary Robinson said the improvements were not before time.

She said: "Some of the roads in Clitheroe are in a poor state. For example, a massive pothole has appeared in Castle Street.

"But Parson Lane has been bad for quite a while. It doesn't look good for the town when people come and visit and see the roads in a bad state."