SHOPPING guru Mary Portas, who has advised a number of East Lancashire towns, has predicted that it “will take years” to turn around the fortunes of Britain’s beleaguered high streets.

Portas was appointed as a high streets guru by the previous government – and toured Nelson after it was awarded £100,000 to regenerate the heart of the Pendle town.

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Others who applied for assistance, such as Oswaldtwistle, Standish Street in Burnley and Padiham, were given £10,000 as seed funding towards more smaller-scale intervention work.

But in an interview with a national newspaper, the self-proclaimed ‘Queen of Shops’ has insisted that too much was being expected of local councils, especially against a backdrop of austerity.

Portas said: “Regeneration will take years. It is such a big issue, involving real policy changes around rates, planning, parking. Central government is trying to put all the onus on local councils, but they have nothing in their pots.

“If you have money that needs to go either into social care or into giving a rent rebate to shops, then where is the council going to put it?”

And the TV presenter was stung by criticism of her role, which saw her travel the length and breadth of the country.

She added: “I remember going to Whitehall for the first time, saying, ‘Surely they have done reports like mine before?’. They said, ‘Oh, yeah – see all those filing cabinets? Full of them’.

“I thought, the last place I want to end up is the back of a filing cabinet. Little did I know I was going to end up on the front page of all the newspapers.

“If you go into politics, you are game. Before the report, I do not think I had ever had anything negative written about me, not once. You have to be so careful or people will stop putting their heads above the parapet.”

Town teams were created in Nelson, Oswaldtwistle and Padiham, while Portas was also quick to praise Catch (Campaign for Accrington Town Centre’s Heart) for its drive to clean up the Hyndburn hub.

Cllr Eileen Ansar, who runs the fashion store Paris in Scotland Road, said: “The town is flourishing now because of the work of local traders, who have brought in stores people need, rather than the likes of the Portas Pilot Towns initiative.”