BURNLEY's town centre management team is looking to attract multi-national companies to the town in a bid to give shoppers more of what they want.

Marketing manager Ian Stackhouse said people wanted to see big name shops like Miss Selfridge, and department stores such as Hennes and Debenhams investing in the town.

But with Burnley town centre's vacancy rate currently standing at just 11 per cent he admitted there was little room for a big chain store.

Mr Stackhouse said: "Our vacancy rate is very low, the national average is 13 per cent so we would be hard-pushed to bring in a big name store because we only have limited amounts of space in key town centre locations.

"But we want this to change so we can meet the needs of customers who want to see more big name stores in Burnley.

"It is crying out for someone to come into the centre and create extra space so that we can give the shoppers what they want and attract more

people into the town."

He said that in Burnley alone since January 2000, there had been more than £50 million invested in retail and leisure, with £10m invested in

new leisure ventures such as the Australian themed Walkabout bar and Surfer's Paradise club in Hammerton Street, which attracted thousands of people during its opening weekend.

Mr Stackhouse said more than 1,000 new jobs had been created in the town with the opening of 79 town centre retail, commercial and leisure businesses.

He said: "This is really good news for Burnley centre but we also have a lot of office space available so we will be actively looking at that in the coming months to try and get some investment into the town that way."