A TOUR of some of the area's worst pockets of deprivation awaits Housing Minister Lord Falconer when he visits the area later this month.
Darwen and Rossendale MP Janet Anderson is ready to greet the minister when he arrives in Darwen on October 19.
Mrs Anderson says she hopes to show him some of the difficulties faced in the parts of area -- particularly from privately owned terraced housing which has low capital value and results in many houses standing empty.
In a letter to the housing minister she said: "This means that we have many empty properties in this sector, as we do indeed in the public sector.
"But it also means that private landlords increasingly rent their houses to those on housing benefit, which is producing small but significantly important pockets of run down areas - in short ghettoes."
She added that in recent months more asylum seekers were "being deposited in these areas which inevitably has exacerbated the problems of social deprivation."
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