HIGHER costs for home buyers should not take the wind from the sails of East Lancashire's recovering housing market, says the boss of Lancashire's biggest building society.

Eddie Shapland, chief executive of the Nelson-based Marsden, said the cut in mortgage relief announced in the budget - equivalent to around a quarter per cent on interest rates - would not greatly affect house sales.

Nor, he believed, would the increase in stamp duty on £250,000 plus homes have much effect locally because there were so few in that range.

But solicitor Alan Riley of Burnley estate agents Clifford Smith and Buchanan said:"It means anyone buying a £60,000 house has an extra £600 bill just because they are moving house. It is disgusting."

The budget brought petrol queues from 8.15am at filling stations, with Colne Asda reporting the busiest day of the year as the 4p per litre rise took effect from 6pm.

Drink duty rises would do nothing to wipe out the differential between British and continental prices, said Burnley landlord, Pat Kerry, landlord of the Hare and Hounds at Briercliffe.

Nelson tobacco wholesalers Broughton and Hartley could not understand why the 19p-a-packet hike on cigarettes would wait until December.

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