BURNLEY COUNCIL has been told to get its act together after it was revealed an urgent Task Force recommendation had not been put in place nearly a year after it was suggested.

Council leader Stuart Caddy today admitted plans for a communication unit had 'slipped'.

The Task Force report into Burnley's summer of trouble was released last December and it said the council should give "urgent attention" to establishing and resourcing a professional Corporate Communications Unit by July 2002.

It said members of the public had expressed concern about where money was being allocated in the town as it had not been communicated to them properly.

Conservative councillor Peter Doyle said today: "I appreciate it is difficult to employ such people, but we have obviously to get our act together and get through the process speedily."

Burnley MP Peter Pike said the matter needed to be resolved as fast as possible.

He said: "Obviously it's very important that we get the message across to people.

"Far too many untrue stories circulate and people say things that are fiction as fact. I hope that they can get this part of the task force report on communications up and running as fast as possible.

"It is a massive project and obviously not everything can get done exactly to time.''

Council leader Stuart Caddy said overall he was pleased with the many recommendations that had been carried out and the objectives which had been met.

He said: "The communications unit has slipped behind. We went out to appoint people and got down to two shortlisted and they gave back word.

"I don't see it as a major problem and everything else is going very well. The county council has picked up its task force recommendations and people from other sectors are really working hard on it.

"I am really pleased things are going the way they are. This will be an on-going process and it is not something where we are thinking that has been done so we don't have to think about it again.

"Although there is a long way to go there are several improvements that we can be proud of, and even though there are one or two areas where we have slipped slightly behind, this is largely because we are determined to do the job right."

A six monthly report into the Task Force's progress highlighted a number of areas it had done well, including:

l Housing -- Burnley has helped secure funding of £2.66million to develop a programme of housing market renewal in East Lancashire

l Environmental improvements -- successful programmes of clearing up rubbish and derelict property have been launched and the council is currently looking at ways of joining up environmental services to make them more efficient.

l Race equality -- the council has developed its race equality scheme and is currently working on ways of implementing it in service delivery.