LONG-SERVING Pendle councillor Roy Clarkson will be awarded the Freedom of the Borough this week after he revealed he will step down from the council in May.

And former councillor Kenneth Spence will also receive the same honour after all parties approved the motion at the last full council meeting.

Coun Clarkson has missed several meetings in recent months due to ill-health and has decided to retire as a councillor and leader of the Conservative group on Pendle Council to spend more time with his family.

To recognise his commitment and dedication to the council during the past 26 years, he will be presented with his Freedom scroll by the Mayor, Coun Colin Waite, at a special council meeting tomorrow.

Coun Clarkson was first elected to Pendle Borough Council in May, 1976, as a councillor for Reedley ward and has remained its representative ever since.

He has campaigned on many issues over the years, particularly for improvements to Brierfield town centre, and played a major role in fostering the industrial relations which exist within the council. He was Mayor of the Borough in 1993.

Coun Waite said: "Roy has led the Conservative group all the time I have been on the council, which is a considerable amount of years and through a period when their numbers were as low as three.

"Whenever a meeting gets a bit heated, he has always managed to come in with the right comment to help ease the tension.

"On a personal note, I think he did an excellent job as Mayor and it will be strange not to see him in the chamber because he is the only remaining member who has served consistently since the inauguration of the borough council."

Kenneth Spence was first elected to the former Nelson Council in November 1952 and represented Clover Hill ward until local government re-organisation in 1974. He was again elected to represent the same ward on the new Pendle Borough Council and remained a councillor until his retirement in 1996.

Mr Spence was Mayor of Nelson in 1966/67, chairman of Pendle Council in 1974/75 and a county councillor from May 1985 until his retirement in 2001.

Leading members of the three political groups on the council agreed that both Mr Spence and Coun Clarkson were rightly seen as local statesmen for Pendle.