A EURO cash boost is being lined up to help the job hopes and lives of residents in the five most deprived areas of Pendle.

Brierfield, Whitefield and Bradley in Nelson, and Vivary and Waterside wards in Colne are eligible for community economic development funding from Europe before the deadline runs out at the beginning of February.

Now the fight is on to create partnership groups of community leaders, business people and councillors to draw up action plans to back the bids.

It is not yet clear how much each partnership would get if their application was successful because they bid for general funding rather than a specific amount.

The wards have been grouped into three - Brierfield, Nelson and Colne - and Pendle Council plans to hold meetings early next month to kickstart the action plans. The council area committees involved will discuss the chance of Euro funding at their next meetings.

If successful, the cash would be mainly used to pay for experts to come in and advise community groups on how to play a more leading role in the regeneration of their areas.

Council services director John Kirk explained: "The difficulty with many community groups is that they lack the experience and background to take a leading role.

"The idea of this scheme is to put in someone to help them.

"There is also an element of co-ordinating all the different programmes which are going on in an area and pulling together all the strands.

"The basic thought behind the funding scheme is that if you can get people into work, then everything else takes care of itself."

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