£9m council windfall

The golden cash carrot was being dangled in front of council leaders at a Downing Street reception after the area was one of just six in the country to be put forward for the windfall.

But Blackburn with Darwen Council will only be eligible for the cash if it meets a tough new set of criteria to bring services up to scratch.

The move caused a political storm today when Tories accused the Government of waving the incentive in front of council chiefs as ploy to win votes in the forthcoming local elections.

Some councillors accused the Government of only offering the incentive to areas it expects to fight hardest in the election.

Council leader Malcolm Doherty and chief executive Phil Watson were signing the Public Service Agreement, which could mean almost £9million extra over three years for the borough, at a ceremony today in London attended by Government ministers.

In return the council will agree to deliver better services to local residents and get the extra cash to pay for improvements -- but failure to do so will mean some of the money not being handed over.

The council has just three years to bring the improvements into place.

The targets they have to meet are improved standards in education for people of all ages, better road safety including a 75 per cent reduction in the number of children killed on the borough's roads, a cut in juvenile offending and re-offending and a 10 per cent drop in referrals for juvenile nuisance.

Other targets include improved library access, better care for the elderly, higher turnout in local elections, getting more people into work, more recycling and improving access to council services for those in rural areas.

Some of the specific targets which the council has to meet include:

Increasing electoral turnout by five per cent Increasing the numbers of children achieving level five at Key Stage Three by six per cent

Enabling 5,000 people to access school resources

Reducing the numbers of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents by 25 per cent

Recycling an extra five per cent of household waste

Cutting youth offending by an extra three per cent

Becoming the first unitary council with a library open 60 hours a week

Helping an extra 200 unemployed people find work

Reducing the rate of teenage pregnancies by an extra five per cent

Setting up a neighbourhood management scheme in an isolated rural area.

The other councils chosen to lead the scheme include Stockton, Warwickshire, Kent, Tameside and Norfolk.

Coun Gail Barton, executive member for resources at Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: "Everyone who lives in the borough will benefit directly from this Public Service Agreement and that is why the Council has signed up to it.

"The Public Service Agreement is a sign of the Government's confidence in us as a council. It will bring extra money of £8.85 million to help us improve services and reduce red tape and bureaucracy."

But Coun Colin Rigby, leader of the council's Conservative group, said the scheme was an election ploy in areas the Government thought it would struggle in during the forthcoming elections.

He said: "It's basically the Labour party trying to inject money into the boroughs they think they will have problems in come election time. You only have to look at which towns have got them, it's pretty self evident when you look at it."

Initially the council will be given £1million by the Government and a further £4.1million over the following three years. In addition they will be given extra credit approvals which will mean another £3.75million for the borough.

Blackburn with Darwen was chosen by the Government out of a short-list of 20 authorities after councils across the country applied to take part in the new scheme which will lead to less central control of their activities.

If the scheme proves successful the Government hopes other councils will be willing to take on the tougher targets in return for extra cash to boost local services.