SO great is public concern over the issue that it was always clear that Labour-run Lancashire County Council's decision a week ago to shut 32 of its care homes for the elderly would be far from the end of the matter.

But with the county having brushed aside the immense opposition of voters, who else might act for the people? Step up, the district councils with care homes on the hit-list in their areas.

And are not those which have got together to mount a legal challenge to the closure decision only rightly doing their duty as public representatives - above all, when the volume of protest shows it was in defiance of what people wanted?

Three of East Lancashire's district councils seem not to agree. Unlike Burnley and Ribble Valley, which have joined Chorley and Wyre councils in the legal bid to save the care homes, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Pendle are refusing to back the action.

Why?

Though it has resolutely opposed the closures, Pendle perhaps has a good reason for not joining in. For only three weeks ago, it unveiled a rescue plan that might spare the care homes in its area - by their being run by a not-for-profit trust instead of the LCC.

But what excuse do the others have for opting out of the legal challenge?

Labour-run Rossendale, it seems, has promptly fallen in step with the party line at County Hall, deeming the care home closures and shake-up of care for the elderly to be a good thing despite the voters' immense doubts and fears for the effect on old folk. So, in principle, the council will not join in the legal action.

Hyndburn, also Labour-run, backs off in the name of financial prudence. The legal bill would cost council taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds in a move that might not succeed, according to council leader Ian Ormerod.

Cynics, of course, may see another sort of prudence at work in Hyndburn and Rossendale - that of not wanting to rock the Labour boat despite the people wanting it very much rocked and their counting the cost of the closures in the huge human anguish they will bring.