AT a time when they should be excitedly planning for work and further education, more teenage girls in this area are facing an unplanned pregnancy than almost anywhere else in Europe.

Figures for teenage pregnancies in some parts of East Lancashire are nearly twice the national average of 45 per 1,000 of the female population aged 15 to 17.

Depressingly, in some areas a bad situation is actually getting worse with, for example, the number of girls under 16 getting pregnant per thousand in Hyndburn going up between 1998 and 1999 from 11 to 13.7 per thousand.

For the individual girls, these pregnancies are a tragedy that stops education in its tracks and consigns them to a life of poverty, struggling to make ends meet on meagre state benefits.

Sadly the statistical chances are that this lifestyle will be passed on to the children of the, often single, parents and so the cycle of deprivation continues for another generation. In 1999, the Government's Social Exclusion Unit Report highlighted how Britain had the highest incidence of teenage pregnancy in Europe and set out a ten-year action plan aimed at halving the rate of conception among under-18s and getting more teenage parents into education, training and employment.

To achieve this aim, the county council has been given £360,000 for improving advice, support and contraception services through the Lancashire Teenage Pregnancy Action Team.

The project will particularly focus on three 'hot spot' boroughs of Burnley, Pendle and Hyndburn.

As Coun Brian Johnson says, it is all about "giving our young people the best start in life."

The figures show our teenage girls desperately need this help to stop their lives (and those of their children) being blighted by unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.