BURNLEY has received a £7million Euro funding boost in the bid to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour.

The money will be matched from other government and public sources to make a £14 million programme over the next five years.

The project known as the Urban 2 programme is focused on addressing the effect of crime and anti-social behaviour, improving community safety, providing help for offenders and potential offenders to get into work and off crime and increasing the skills of local residents.

Burnley Council's European officer Alison Davies said it was good news for Burnley and had come at an appropriate time in light of the recent Task Force report into the summer disturbances.

Burnley is the only council in the North West to receive approval and one of only 11 in the UK.

The other nearest are at Halifax and Derby.

The programme will cover an area of Burnley of 32,000 residents, a third of the borough's population, in the inner urban areas of the town including Bank Hall, Daneshouse, Barclay, Trinity, Fulledge, Brunshaw and parts of Queensgate, Rosehill and Coal Clough with Deerplay.

The programme is divided into three main themes.

One is empowering the community, to encourage people to become more active in a whole host of things such as setting up groups and training courses to enable those groups to get more money into developments in their areas.

The second is positive pathways for local people, providing training for young people to stay in work or to get into employment. The third is developing safer neighbourhoods by identifying areas which are unsafe and providing things like CCTV, providing more community wardens or alleygating to make life more difficult for the criminal.

Alison added: "These are by no means the-be-all-and-end-all. We are being encouraged to be innovative and we hope local groups will be involved in all aspects of the programme.

"This exciting initiative is an opportunity to try out new and innovative ways of tackling these issues and will have a high profile regionally and nationally."

Council leader Stuart Caddy commented: "This is an excellent opportunity to work closely with the community in tackling what is a key priority for residents, reducing crime.

"Approval of the Urban 2 programme is a significant achievement for Burnley and will encourage greater joint working so that real progress can be made to improve the quality of life of local residents."