Doubts over pedigree of 'dog's dinner' plans

The council employed consultants to draw up proposals on how the borough's £12million share of Government funding under the Elevate programme should be spent.

The plans, which include the demolition of 128 homes in the Clitheroe Road and Holden Road areas, have now gone out to public consultation and have caused outrage among residents in some of the streets under threat.

At a meeting of the Brierfield and Reedley Committee this week, residents slammed the proposals.

Resident Audrey Westwell said: "A lot of the residents on King Street Terrace are retired people who own their homes and we will fight for our rights to keep them."

Azhar Ali, a former leader of Pendle Council, said he would like to see more options on how the regeneration cash should be spent.

He said: "We want to see improvements but we don't want to see just one option.

"The only one we have on the table at the moment is demolition.

"We want to be consulted but we want real influence over the changes.

"It is not going to work if the council is going to ride rough shod over people's views."

Resident Frank Wren added: "These proposals are a dog's dinner. The council should take them back, dump them and start again because it is rubbish."

Residents also complained that the consultants hired to produce the report had not consulted properly with residents.

The council's executive director of regeneration, Brian Cookson, told residents that nothing was set in stone.

He said: "This is not a fait accompli - the report sets out how we are going to take this forward. We acknowledge that the consultation so far has not been done effectively and we have set out how we intend to improve this."

The council is sending out an information pack to residents affected by the proposals for both Brierfield and Colne and is offering one-to-one or group meetings.

The consultation process will run from the end of May to early June and the outcome will reported to the area committees.