HOWEVER much or little substance there is in the Tory response that Labour is seeking to buy votes in the looming local elections, what is certain about the £9million improvements windfall the government is dangling in front of Blackburn with Darwen Council is that it is not a gift, but has to be earned.

For the development local government was witnessing today as the council and five other authorities signed up at Downing Street for this ground-breaking Public Service Agreement deal was the arrival of performance-related pay for public bodies.

For thousands of workers, of course, there is nothing new in the concept, but in applying it to local authorities and setting them tough performance targets and real rewards for achieving them, the government introduces an intriguing departure which can only benefit the people of Blackburn with Darwen -- if the council is up to the task.

And whether or not the process of selecting councils for the pioneering scheme involved party-political considerations, it cannot be disputed that the goals for social and economic improvements -- and winning the money to pay for them -- are demanding, as is the three-year timetable to council has been set.

Consider just a few of them -- reducing teenage pregnancies by five per cent, cutting youth offending by three per cent, slashing road-accident deaths and injuries by a quarter, helping an extra 200 people to find work and achieving a five per cent increase in election turn-outs.

Even so, all the tasks the council has been set are evidently considered attainable and their achievement would bring clear and tangible benefits to thousands of people.

But if the means of realising this and the extra funding involved is that of putting town halls under this new form of pressure, then perhaps the only real complaint that this project may attract is that it is being applied to only a handful of local authorities when taxpayers would welcome far more being set the challenge now facing Blackburn with Darwen.