HOW right it was of Burnley MP Peter Pike to act swiftly as the government set out its Queen's Speech agenda and demand urgent and real action for East Lancashire's horrendous housing problem.

It is, of course, not as if the scale of the problem is unknown to the government -- particularly that of the region's privately-owned housing, which accounts for 99 per cent of the one-in-five East Lancashire houses that are classed as unfit to live in. The rot has been going on for decades.

Indeed, only late last year, as Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was unveiling his Urban White Paper aimed at regenerating inner cities and deprived areas of towns, the extent of East Lancashire housing poverty and squalor was being brought home to him by Mr Pike and fellow back-bencher Gordon Prentice of Pendle.

They told how more than 10 per cent of house sales in five out of the region's six local authorities were for prices under £20,000. But if that is a reflection of the depressed value of homes in the rows and rows of old terraced houses that are a legacy of East Lancashire's population explosion in Victorian times, it is also a grim guide to the state of thousands of houses that nobody can sell and no-one will buy.

The upshot is more and more becoming empty -- 3,500 in Burnley alone -- and falling into disrepair.

And highlighting the human misery that goes with this by citing the case in the Commons of a terrified 87-year-old woman whose home for 50 years is now the only occupied one in a block that has had three fires and is haunted by drug addicts, Mr Pike also revealed the nonsense of people having to pay council tax on homes no-one wants. But how long must this destitution and anguish prevail on such a vast scale in East Lancashire?

Mr Pike is right -- the only option is the "difficult" one of widespread clearance and government money being allocated to decide which homes come down and to provide for the renewal and repairs of the cleared areas and the houses left standing. The government must respond with determination -- and the cash.