AN environmental company which is hoping to get charitable status is planning to open a tourist information centre and education centre in Padiham.

The tourist information centre will be the first for the town, which has only just got its town council back after a 30-year break.

Gawthorpe Environment Movement managing director Steve Taylor said: "The shop is also going to be used to deliver our environmental awareness package and activities.

"We have applied to change the use of the former tobacconist shop in Burnley Road and if we get permission we will be preserving the interior.

"This will be the first tourist information centre for Padiham and we have the support of the new town council. I was on the steering committee which preceded its formation."

He said that as a group Gawthorpe Environment Movement (GEM) has been in existence since the mid-1990s to look after areas of woodland in Padiham and from that the group developed into an education consultancy and also carried out other projects.

Steve said: "Two years ago we developed a programme of growing wild flowers and linked it with the Lancashire County Council biodiversity action plan to reintroduce wild flowers such as primrose, cowslip and kidney vetch into East Lancashire and Lancashire as a whole."

Currently several members of GEM are putting themselves through degree courses to assist them in their work within the company, which is seeking part charitable status.

Steve said: "We are a limited company but we are moving towards becoming a charity and our business plan has been rewritten several times as things change.

"We have about a dozen members, six to eight of which are active. It will make such a difference to us if we can have a shop front in the centre of Padiham.

"We will be able to use the shop to sell birdboxes, bat boxes and owlboxes and wild flowers."

The group has been instrumental over the past two years in the planting round Shuttleworth Mead, the new industrial estate in Padiham.