LYTHAM St Annes could have a new lifeboat in time for the new Millennium.

But it will still have to be stationed in a temporary home on a council car park - possibly for another year.

Lytham coxswain Martin Jaggs - at 32 one of the youngest lifeboat skippers in the country - is due to take out the new lifeboat on sea trials at the end of November.

Called Her Majesty The Queen, the £500,000 vessel has been undergoing a major overhaul in Hamble, Northumberland.

If all goes well, she is hoped to be transferred before Christmas, coming by road to Preston and then down the Ribble to the Fylde Coast.

Originally funded by the police authorities, Her Majesty The Queen will have an official rededication ceremony next summer.

Meanwhile the current relief lifeboat, Fisherman's Friend, is operating successfully from its temporary home in Fairhaven Road car park, where it was moved in January after the silting up of the Ribble made operations increasingly difficult.

Lifeboat secretary Frank Kilroy said: "The move has very much proved its worth - four of the jobs we've done this year we wouldn't have been able to manage if we'd still been at Lytham because we wouldn't have been able to get out in time."

A special compound has been built in the car park to ensure the vessel's security, from which it is swiftly towed out for emergency launches.

Meanwhile the RNLI is negotiating for a permanent site for a new lifeboat house, somewhere between St Annes Pier and the temporary site.

"We're just having to wait till the negotiations are complete," said Mr Kilroy. "We're in the hands of Fylde Borough Council."

The target date for opening the new lifeboat house is 2001. The RNLI hopes to attract visitors and school-groups as it does at the new Blackpool lifeboat centre, opened on central promenade last year.

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