Getting better by going it alone

The state of the town centre, traffic problems and troubled housing estates are not subjects that have led to widespread acclaim being heaped on the authority that left the auspices of Lancashire County Council in 1998 to go it alone as a unitary borough.

But in two areas Blackburn with Darwen Council has made huge strides in just three years to gain national acclaim - and they are areas that are absolutely pivotal to our future.

First is the borough's education department which after not much more than a year in existence was named by the government as a beacon of excellence.

Visitors from throughout the country, including the Prime Minister himself, have been to the borough to see the achievements of schools in an area which has a higher than average share of social problems to combat.

The progress made by the department led by Mark Pattison, who has been voted one of the country's top ten education directors, compares fantastically with the dire showing of many other authorities in metropolitan areas of Yorkshire and the North West.

Indeed it is ironic that Mr Pattison's success has led to him being wooed away to try to get the much larger authority of Bradford back on track after it's school management was branded a failure by the Government.

Today we hear that Blackburn with Darwen Social Services department is also a winner because it has been named among the 20 most improved in the country.

It is indeed creditable that in so many of the areas inherited from the county council services can be seen to have improved.

Visits to youngsters on the child protection register, people in care receiving statements of needs and elderly people being helped to live at home are all areas where the statistics show that 'smaller is better' rather than 'big is beautiful.'

That this improvement is due to hard work rather than mere institutional change is highlighted by the fact that Lancashire's other unitary borough, Blackpool, is languishing in the bottom ten.