AS owners Standard Life put up the 'For Sale' sign on Blackburn's shopping precinct, their decision to pull out opens up the prospect of a new boost for the town's regeneration.

For while during the nine years that it has been theirs, Standard Life can hardly be said to have been bad owners -- certainly not when they ploughed £15million into its long-overdue refurbishment two years after taking control -- but they have probably gone as far they dared with it.

It is, after all, not the nature of a business managing people's pensions and savings to speculate adventurously. And a measure of this, surely, was Standard Life's reluctance to invest in a desperately-needed and radical revamp of the precinct's run-down Lord Square area.

Now, as they depart, hopes arise that into Blackburn will come a new owner who is an ambitious, forward-looking developer, rather than a cautious nurturer of nest eggs -- someone who will sort out scruffy Lord Square and trigger an exciting new era not only for the shopping precinct, but also for the town's regeneration efforts.

The goal, after all, is that of making Blackburn's town-centre more attractive -- to visit, to shop in, to relax in, to work in and to live in. And, just as MP Jack Straw remarks today, a vital part of that vision is that the town has a bright, clean and vibrant shopping centre.

And this is crucial to the town's bold regeneration schemes --not least the 'anchor' redevelopment of Church Street upon which depends so much of the vision of taking the town centre up-market, attracting better-paid jobs and raising spending levels and overall prosperity.

Blackburn wants a shopping precinct owner who shares that vision and is eager and ready to invest in it; someone who is prepared to speculate to accumulate.