BLACKBURN has leapt 100 places in a profitability league table compared to last year, but still lags behind its Lancashire neighbours.

Just weeks after it was revealed the town was behind Burnley as a shopping centre another survey shows it is still trying to catch up with its more profitable East Lancs neighbour despite massive strides forward. A report by business information firm Dun and Bradstreet of more than 150 towns and cities in the UK shows Blackburn in 49th place, up from 155th last year.

But it also shows Burnley has risen from 54th in 2000 to become the 30th most profitable place in Britain for businesses.

A recent league table of retail centres showed Burnley had leapfrogged Blackburn in the last year according to a league table of the vitality of town centre shopping.

Blackburn with Darwen Council's executive member for regeneration, Coun Ashley Whalley, welcomed the news of Blackburn's climb up the table, but stressed there was more work to do.

He claimed the improvement in the town's overall profitability reflected the council's policy of encouraging high value production, encouraging more high technology firms to locate in and around Blackburn.

He said: "However, it's not an area you sit back and think that you have done it.

"You need to continue to work very hard at it." Coun Whalley added: "It's very positive that companies are in this position but what we want to see next is the move away from the low wage economy to a higher wage economy."

The rankings are based on the number of firms making a profit in the town.

In Burnley 81.1 per cent of companies were making a profit, just above Blackburn which has 78.9 per cent.

Towns and cities in which at least 60 of the top 50,000 companies are located were included in the rankings.

A spokesman for the company which carried out the research, Dun and Bradstreet, said: "Those companies in Blackburn have just been progressively improving, but at the same time other areas of the country have been slipping back, too."

Both Blackburn and Burnley are well behind Preston which tops the Lancashire business hotspots in 10th place, and Bolton is 16th.