A PRESTON voluntary group plans to ditch it's 'blue rinse brigade' image after winning a battle to take over a prime town centre location.

The Preston Council for Voluntary Service, which acts an umbrella group for more than 100 charities and voluntary groups in the Preston area, has been granted planning permission to move into the ground floor of the derelict Prince's Building in Lancaster Road.

The group hopes to use the new site - which it has been told it can use for just three years until the council look for a developer to take over the site - as a springboard to raising its image and getting Preston's private sector involved - the very people who were opposed to the group's move into the retail end of town from their current Fishergate Hill base.

Joan Burrows, the chief officer of the Preston CVS, said: "We are absolutely delighted to have got this site. It is a prime part of town and we can raise our profile from here.

"We want to show people we don't just work with traditional charities and we're not going to be opening a soup kitchen here either, which is what some people seem to think we are about."

But winning over local businessmen may prove a difficult task. A campaign launched by shopkeepers in the Guild Hall arcade prevented the group from moving to an empty unit there, while objections were received from traders on Lancaster Road before the most recent application was approved.

Joan added: "This building is currently boarded up so it doesn't attract any shoppers. We can improve it and help the civic quarter look better. We can enhance our facilities to help even more people."

Preston's planning chiefs have opposed the plans, saying it would attract too many non-retail facilities into the town centre. Their objections were thrown out by councillors after an impassioned plea by Labour councillor John Browne.

He said: "I watched the council kick this good group in the past and it can't be allowed to happen again. To have refused the application with no alternative for that building would have been a disgrace."

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