PLANS for a replacement ambulance station for Stacksteads will be discussed at a meeting of ambulance service chiefs later this week.

The new station will cost £350,000 and a site has been earmarked in Blackwood Road.

But the controversy over what will be built on the current site once the station is gone continues.

The Stacksteads station in Commercial Street has been named in a survey for Lancashire Ambulance Service Trust as the number one priority station for relocation in the whole of Lancashire.

The Trust board have agreed that the building, which is a two-storey ex-Territorial Army barracks, is unsuitable and have allocated cash in their 2003/04 budget for a new one.

The latest developments will be discussed at a meeting of the Lancashire Ambulance Service NHS Trust board on Friday.

Meanwhile Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Primary Care Trust want to house a new Stacksteads doctors' surgery on the site as health and safety regulations to be implemented next year will make the current Farholme Lane village surgery outdated.

A decision on plans for the new health centre in Stacksteads has been deferred.