A PACKAGE of new jobs and rejuvenation is to be created with a £150 million millennium gift for deprived urban areas and struggling rural districts in East Lancashire.

Blackburn with Darwen Council and Ribble Valley Council were the only areas of East Lancashire to be told they had retained their European Objective Two money yesterday.

Burnley, Pendle, Rossendale and Hyndburn all missed out with council chiefs and MPs describing the news as disastrous.

Now delighted officials at Blackburn with Darwen Council have revealed that its share of the cash will be spent on making Blackburn town centre more pedestrian friendly.

By creating a ring-road, using existing routes around the town, council chiefs hope to expand the town centre southwards towards the new development at Town's Moor off Bolton Road and the planned retail park with a cinema behind the railway station at Lower Audley.

The continued development of the Shadsworth Business Park and the Saturn Centre at Green Bank will also receive a share of the cash as the council continues its policy of trying to attract high-tech businesses to the borough.

And it is hoped all those changes will mean new jobs for the area.

Much of the money will pay for "lifelong learning" projects which aim to break down barriers for people who would like to carry on their education.

Council regeneration spokesman Steve Hoyle said: "The aim is to equip people to influence the decisions which shape their lives."

Schemes aimed at regenerating the rural economy will be paid for from the Euro cash grant to Ribble Valley Council. Money is likely to be poured into continuing schemes which have been set up to help the area diversify from its agricultural base.

Andy Ashcroft, regeneration spokesman for Ribble Valley Council, said working with businesses to preserve and perhaps even create new jobs would continue to be the council's prime aim.

He said: "What we need to do is address the structural changes which are taking place in agriculture. There are problems in agriculture which are well documented.

"The Ribble Valley is very dependent on the rest of East Lancashire in terms of its economy. There are tremendous amount of people who commute from here and that give the area a false picture of affluence.

Work on encouraging tourism in the Ribble Valley countryside, with the emphasis on crafts and getting people to visit the area so they can better understand agriculture is seen by Ribble Valley Council as the way forward.

Schemes such as the Bowland Initiative, offering landowners and rural business and grant, are likely to be given extra impetus thanks to the Objective Two Euro cash.

Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans says he would have liked to see more of the area covered by the Euro grants rather than a selection of wards.

He said: "We're not simply talking about farms and farmers but about the people who supply them and a whole range of people dependent on farming who are in trouble."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.