We're back on the road to success

One report tells that nearly 500 new jobs have come to Burnley in nine months.

And, in another on the country's self-made young millionaires, East Lancashire comes out as a breeding ground for budding tycoons.

Contrast that with the grim times of recession in the early Eighties and Nineties when our region's old smokestack industries were running out of steam and jobs were disappearing by the thousand and it is plain that a remarkable recovery has taken place.

East Lancashire's unemployment rate is now lower than the average for the North West and for the country as a whole.

But this revival is not simply a reflection of the country's general economic upturn, it is the result of the region exploiting its assets, finding incentives to make them more attractive to employers and selling them hard to tempt outside investors. The assets are the skills of East Lancashire's workforce and the availability of premises and sites - both of which have been boosted by the improved communications that the completion of the M65 is bringing.

The incentives are the special grants available to industry - a factor which this newspaper has stressed for years is vital for the recovery of declining regions.

And the hard-sell comes with the marketing expertise of our local government economic development units.

It's a formula that works - just as Burnley's new jobs upsurge proves.

East Lancashire is thriving and is packed with the potential for even greater success.

And a lot of that is down to the region having faith in itself and, in the hard times, seeing setback itself as an incentive for rebuilding and recovery rather than lament - and when councils and the government join in with potent regional aid programmes and active marketing, the trick works.

We have gone from gloom to boom.

Let's have even more.

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