THERE was bad news for East Lancashire's struggling economic revival today.

Bureaucrats at the Government Office of the North West have told local councils that they will not be getting a £50 million slice of the latest financial cake being offered by the Government.

The money would have gone on numerous schemes including helping to improve educational standards in Blackburn, running youth projects in Pendle, regenerating mills in Rossendale and Accrington, and boosting community and voluntary groups in Burnley. There was even a plan for a cable car ride in Rossendale.

One might be forgiven for thinking that East Lancashire has already had more than its fair share of this "Single Regeneration Budget" money in recent years. The money is for one-off projects and councils have to make imaginative bids to get the cash in a competition between councils.

Perhaps the bids were not imaginative enough, but what does concern us is the way in which this "competition" is judged.

Is it simply a case of Buggins' Turn: we got it last year so we can't have it this year? Why else would the whole of East Lancashire have missed out?

Many of the councils say they will press ahead with their bids despite the early "knock-back" from the civil servants.

But whatever the final outcome, they should at least be given a set of concrete reasons why they were turned down, given all the time and effort they have put into preparing the various schemes.

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