BITING criticism of Pendle Council's bid to set up a £5 million dream village for the elderly in a disused hospital has come from the Housing Corporation.

The project to create 100 homes for the elderly was shattered by the Government-backed refusal to put up £3 million of vital funding - a decision which has been branded a betrayal by Liberal council bosses.

But in a letter to council chief executive Stephen Barnes, the corporation's North West director Max Steinberg, has spelled out the reasons for refusal - and laid the blame firmly at the town hall's doorstep.

Opposition Labour bosses have also weighed in with their own condemnation - accusing the Liberal regime of misleading the public, failing to listen to the advice of their own housing officers in pushing for the scheme and 'fiddling the facts' to win public funding.

But council leader Alan Davies, today re-emphasised the council's belief that it was right in pressing for the Hartley scheme. "It was fully justified and still is," he said.

In his letter, Mr Steinberg casts strong doubt over the need for the scheme, which would have taken over all the cash allocated to Pendle for other projects over the next four years, and says it did not reflect the preferences of the vast majority of older people in Pendle.

He says the council left unanswered questions and anomalies about the scheme which had been raised over a long period. These, he says, included an apparent lack of consistency with the council's existing housing strategy; an unexplained departure from the previously stated requirements for provision for older people; the wisdom of the proposal and the "wider strategic implications of entering into a long-term funding commitment for Hartley Village, to the exclusion of all other areas of need." The Corporation boss questions the council's perceived knock-on benefits of proceeding with the scheme as 'highly questionable."

Mr Steinberg calls on the council to provide the reports which could justify its decision to prioritise the scheme.

He says he sees no reason to challenge the conclusions of the council's own research consultants that there was unlikely to be large demand for Hartley Village and little to support large-scale use of public cash for it.

Labour spokesman Tim Ormrod, accused Liberal leaders of misleading the public and demanded to see correspondence which would show the council pressed on with the scheme, despite warnings from its own officers and doubts expressed over a long period by the Housing Corporation.

Coun Davies said the Housing Corporation's comments were based on an out-dated strategy document drawn up before the Hartley project was envisaged or investigated.

He added: "There is no doubt in my mind that it is the best scheme for Hartley Hospital and for the housing needs of Pendle."

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