AS THE row rages on over East Lancashire children being sent to schools miles from their homes and MP Nigel Evans blames poor long-term planning for the lack of places nearby, a sensible solution that the government ought to champion is unveiled today.

Ribble Valley MP Mr Evans is, of course, right to call for more co-ordinated planning when the upshot of building hundreds of new homes without provision being made for the ensuing pressure on school places is the mess that is now emerging.

But is not an overall blueprint to offset such problems what is really needed?

After all, the crux of this crisis is people moving away from where the schools are and developers following and assisting the flight of population from the towns.

Is not the solution, then, to make urban life and housing more attractive?

Certainly, this contention, argued today in a study by the Council for the Protection of Rural England, has lots of attractive points - among them the thousands of new jobs and billions of pounds that are added to the economy each year by urban regeneration. But, in addition, there is the gain that, as towns are improved, so is the quality of life within them.

This, in turn, halts the flight to the suburbs and rural areas and protects the countryside from increasing development.

And when it comes to schools, children are living where provision already exists.

It is not a new idea.

Indeed, in East Lancashire, Blackburn has been a strong advocate of urban regeneration with lots of new and attractive homes being built where old housing and industry once was - as with its Waterside redevelopments along the canal corridor.

But in its forthcoming Urban White Paper - at which the CPRE's study is targeted - the government would do well to make this a norm.

It should give priority to so-called "brown field" sites in urban areas at the same time protecting the green belt and providing long-term safeguards against the sort of crisis of logistics that so many East Lancashire children are victims of today.

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