AS IT approaches the self-rule of unitary status, Blackburn with Darwen Council is revealed today as being burdened with the biggest debt of any borough in Lancashire.

It is so large that, at £114.7million in the red, the town hall owes almost twice as much as Preston, the county's next most in-debt council, and the bill is equal to almost £800 per taxpayer.

Yet whether or not this is a reflection of how well local government has been managed down the years - and, no doubt, this revelation will give the Labour-run authority's political opponents plenty to chew on - it is a situation that needs to be put into perspective.

The council's finance director Alan Cotton today balances the debt and its comparatively high level against the town's assets - such as the town hall complex and the property the council owns across the borough.

But though these may be sufficient to repay what is owed, practically they are not all realisable assets but mainly collateral in accountancy terms.

Town halls, after all, cannot be sold as easily as people sell their mortgaged homes.

It is, surely, more useful to examine how and why the debt burden came about. And one obvious factor is what sort of place Blackburn with Darwen is - it is a borough with one of the worst housing problems in the country.

It has been the price of vital renewal down the decades of unfit housing stock that has been a key element in the amassing of this debt burden.

Blackburn's legacy of the Victorian slums that have been demolished and the huge number that still have to be be replaced or made fit is a major explanation for this millstone.

It has, of course, been added to by the fact that some of the replacements have become not assets, but liabilities.

The case of the town still paying for the notorious, now-demolished deck-access flats at Shadsworth and the unwanted high-rise flats at MIll HIll are instances of how "cheap" alternatives were anything but.

Yet it is the ongoing problem of having so much bad housing coupled with a huge debt that makes a serious difficulty for the soon-to-be-independent Blackburn with Darwen.

For servicing that debt consumes a huge slice of council tax revenue with no benefit for householders.

Yet tackling the housing crisis without increasing borrowing, raising council tax or reducing services is the equation that has to be solved.

That is the tough challenge the new unitary authority faces, but, unless there is concerted government action on bad housing and aid for local authorities saddled with huge amounts of it, the task is likely to remain one of simply servicing the debt rather than getting rid of it.

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