AN ambitious £6million plan to build Britain's most energy-efficient town hall in Accrington has bitten the dust.

The planned solar-powered Hyndburn council office development near the town centre would have won the borough national recognition, a report to councillors states.

But the council's Conservative group, who seized power last month, have fulfilled a pre-election pledge that the £6.1million scheme to build "luxury offices" would not go ahead.

Plans to create a zero-energy building with negligible running costs were proposed by the previous Labour-run council. The European Commission announced it would make a grant of £700,000 towards building new offices on derelict land between St James Square and Scaitcliffe Lodge.

Research into the scheme was carried out and consultants were enlisted to gather support. A low energy offices panel was set up and proposed that a 44,000 square foot office building would be built to house all the council's offices.

But despite a high-profile national marketing campaign and approaches to Government ministers, the project failed to receive cash backing from the Government. A scaled-down low-energy project, aimed at replacing the council's rented Eagle Street offices, was rejected last night by Hyndburn policy and resources committee.

Council leader Coun Peter Britcliffe said: "It is part of our policy to scrap the building of these luxury offices. Spending £6million on these zero-energy offices would not have been acceptable to the people of Hyndburn."

The committee voted that plans to build more modest offices at the site off St James Square should be considered, and officers should carry out research to find the most cost-effective solution.

The present offices in Eagle Street, which house a number of council departments, were built from low quality materials and are now considered unsuitable because of inefficient design and poor security, according to a council report.

Government regulations mean the Eagle Street offices must be vacated by June 2002 if the council is to avoid investing £1.2million in the rented site.

Various options including building new offices on land earmarked for a cinema development between Hyndburn Road and Moreton Street will be considered by officers who will report back to the committee in September.

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