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28th February 2008
Labour MP Kitty Ussher today celebrated the government’s decision to allocate £150m to housing renewal in Burnley and across East Lancashire in the next three years. The cash was announced to parliament at 9.30am this morning, and is split roughly equally between the three years.
This means Burnley will receive around £14.5m next year, an increase on last year, with the East Lancashire housing renewal agency, Elevate, indicating that similar amounts are likely to be available in the future.
Kitty is calling on Liberal Democrat-run Burnley council to use this cash to speed up the regeneration process, and to drop its controversial policy of scrapping compensation grants to those forced out of their homes when areas are redeveloped, and only offering loans instead.
Kitty said: “Today’s news is the culmination of a year-long campaign to get a decent settlement for Burnley. I’ve raised it at prime minister’s questions and personally taken ministers around the affected areas of town to see what needs to be done. So I’m pleased with this outcome.”
“I hope it means the council and Elevate agency will now put their feet on the accelerator and get some new houses built.”
“And crucially it means there’ll be enough cash to scrap their ridiculous policy of scrapping the grants paid to people to compensate them for being evicted from their homes, only replacing them with loans. The chief executive of Elevate told me that if he got an allocation of £50 million a year he’d reconsider this policy. He’s got that, so now is the time for action. We need to scrap the loans policy before it comes into effect in April.”
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