POOR housing is a disincentive to inward investment, Burnley councillors will be told tonight.

East Lancashire needs £670 million over ten years to tackle the massive problem of having too many private sector houses.

In many neighbourhoods the housing market has effectively collapsed with houses being abandoned.

It is a key feature in the spiral of decline that includes ill health, low educational attainment, deteriorating environmental conditions and community safety problems.

In some areas terraced houses can be bought for less than £3,000. The council executive is being asked to continue to make the housing issue a priority activity.

Housing needs and strategy manager David Riley will report that under the leadership of Pendle's chief executive, Stephen Barnes, he had prepared a report as chairman of the East Lancashire Housing Forum.

At the same time proposals for housing market renewal had been developed by the northern regional housing forum. Mr Riley says the Housing Minister, Lord Falconer appeared to be fully in support of the creation of a housing market renewal fund with new resources.

Mr Riley added: "At this stage there is absolutely no indication of what the process would be for obtaining the resources. There is, of course, no indication of how much resources might be available, if any. Though it would be unlikely that East Lancashire's proposed £670 million over ten years would be become available.

"However, there is an emergency consensus that resources would be made available on a sub-regional basis, across relevant housing markets rather than for individual local authority areas."

Mr Riley said if that was the case it was likely that new sub-regional housing market renewal partnerships would need to be formed, perhaps in this area under the East Lancashire Partnership.