FIRM proposals could soon be announced to take East Lancashire people off the dole, says Burnley's economic development chief Coun Marcus Johnstone.

He said the the new Labour government had hit the ground running in its key pledge to take 250,000 youngsters off the jobless register .

Already six East Lancashire local authorities were preparing to link with Groundwork Trust to provide training and jobs under the new environmental task force initiative.

Coun Johnstone told the economic and property committee: "We have action after 18 years of inaction. This will be entirely different from previous Groundwork schemes."

Up to 200 young people in East Lancs could find environment-linked jobs under the task force scheme every six months.

But Coun Les Harrison said: "Groundwork was always about training people for dry stone walling. Unless it has changed completely, we are going to get a lot of what we had before."

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