A GAMBLE on the lottery is the only way Burnley has any hope of getting many improvement schemes carried out, says council finance chairman, Peter Kenyon.

Lack of Government help, he says, means the town must sell assets to maintain others and rely on lottery cash for most new schemes.

He adds: "Lottery money means that again decisions are made by a quango in London about what Burnley can have."

He said the town would spend £7.6 million on capital schemes in the coming year.

But there was simply no money for a further £3 million improvement projects, which would have to wait their chance in future years.

In his annual budget statement Coun Kenyon said the council had been protesting to deaf ears about declining mainstream allocations and resources made available by the Government for capital expenditure.

"The adverse trend continues remorselessly for next year.

"On housing, our overall allocation has been cut by 21 per cent. We will only be investing about four per cent of what is needed to modernise Burnley's homes.

"Meanwhile homelessness rises and houses fall into ruin."

The budget shows Burnley has slashed more than £1 million from budgets to meet Government spending limits.

Coun Kenyon went on: "Despite our financial problems, we are not proposing any cuts to our service standards, no change to our policy on the complete disregard of war pensions for the purpose of calculating housing benefit and no changes to the concessionary travel scheme for students and the elderly."

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