REGENERATION Minister Sally Keeble said Blackburn's Corporation Park was guaranteed a bright future as long as it continued to receive the support of the community.

The minister met members of the Park Supporters' Group during her visit to the 150-year-old park yesterday. The park is in line to receive a £2.5million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The minister visited Blackburn as it is one of 24 partners taking part in a year-long urban regeneration project aimed at making towns and cities better places to live.

The visit followed a spate of vandalism and fires started by juveniles in the park which included litter bins being set alight and the pavilion being damaged.

Mrs Keeble said Corporation Park created a 'heart' for the community and meant that people visited the park for a variety of purposes such as education and leisure. She said a park such as Corporation Park created a good environment and made the town a good place to live and work in. She added "People are brought together through places such as this."

She said that parks had declined over the years and to survive they had to be made relevant to different communities which Corporation Park was striving to do.

She said the plans for the park were very exciting and would restore the park to its former glory and the best guarantee for the park's future came from the strong community support it had.

Although it has suffered from vandalism in the past, chairman of the Supporters' Group Pam Simon said it was no worse than anywhere else and that the group had worked with the police and had been successful in combating vandalism.

Beat officer for the park, PC Antony Peel, said the main problem had been with teenagers causing criminal damage and that there had been problems over the summer but these had been substantially reduced over the last two months.

During her visit the minister met young offenders who have been working at the park.

Kathy Bates of the Youth Offenders Team said that they had been working with the park supporters' group since October 2000 and that the youths took part in activities such as litter picking and removing graffiti.

Deputy Council leader Kate Hollern who met the minister said: "Corporation Park is held up as a flagship to show how communities can work together."