A MOTORBIKE-RIDING mayor is joining the race to become a Member of the European Parliament.

Alan Neal, an independent Rossendale councillor and Mayor of Whitworth, is using the slogan 'Take the Challenge and Make the Change' in a bid to encourage people to vote for him in the June elections.

Coun Neal, 50, of Tonnacliffe Old Road, Whitworth, wants to become an MEP to address the wider issues concerning Britain.

If elected, Coun Neal, who has been involved in local government since 1987 as a town and a borough councillor, would take part in monthly meetings in Brussels.

He said: "There are a lot of major issues which I feel as an independent member I can help address. For instance, if we had the Euro we would be be £1,700 per person better off because of the taxes on goods.

"These are the things they don't want people to hear. There is also a communication issue these days."

Coun Neal's long list of roles include being a member of the Lancashire Association of Parish and Town Councils, a member of the council's Burnley area committee of parish and town councils and in the National Association of Local Councils.

The Bolton Wanderers fan has been married to Janet for 29 years and has two daughters studying at university - Helen Louise, 24, and Kimberley Larne, 20.

He met Janet in 1973 after being involved in a serious motorbike accident which left him hospitalised for four months. She visited him with his foster mothers daughter and they became friends.

As well as being Whitworth's current mayor, town councillor and Rossendale Borough councillor, he has also had previous stints in the post from 1990 to 1991 and was Mayor of Rossendale from 1999 to 2000. As a member of Rochdale Community Health Council from 1990 until 2003 when the government abolished them, he was elected chairman of the Healey Dell joint management committee in Lancashire and Greater Manchester last month.

In May 2002, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Standards and Monitoring Committee in local government as part of the Standard Board for England on Rossendale Borough Council.

He is also vice-chairman of Rossendale's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, a member of Lancaster University Court Senate Committee, a trustee of the Whitworth Elderly and Disabled Care Trust, which helps to run Sunnyside Rest Home, and the Day Care Centre, in Whitworth. In May 1994, he was appointed on the Farrow Hoyle Charity Committee.

In the 1980s he went on a charity motorbike trip around the coastline of Britain covering 3,500 miles in just seven days in aid of the NSPCC's Full Stop campaign.