THE bill for policing Lancashire's millennium celebrations looks set to top £600,000.

Police chiefs had originally set aside half a million pounds in readiness for New Year's Eve 1999.

But Lancashire police bosses have since revealed the final cost of the celebrations is likely to be £100,000 more than originally expected.

Pubs across the county have been given permission to stay open from 11am on January 31 until 11pm on New Year's Day.

Police are planning to have extra patrols on the streets to send out a clear message to potential troublemakers.

Superintendent Bernard Kershaw has been put in charge of the specially set-up Year 2000 Project team.

He said: "We cannot predict with any degree of certainty the demands there will be on police resources.

"Our objective is to ensure that the public enjoy the celebrations safely, and the constabulary is on target to achieve that objective."

An independent survey carried out earlier this year has also revealed the force is well prepared for the year 2000.

The team of assessors looked at how the constabulary's computer system has been altered to cope with the changes and at contingency plans for any potential Millennium bugs.

Deputy Chief Constable Paul Stephenson said: "We have been working hard for months to check all our systems, draw up detailed contingency plans and co-ordinate activities with our partners in the other public sector services.

"We still have some work to complete, which is to be expected in a force as big as this where we have many buildings and a lot of equipment to test, but everything is on schedule."

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