KEY buildings in Nelson could benefit from a share of £2million lottery money under a scheme to enhance the Whitefield and Lomeshaye areas.

Pendle Council was provisionally promised the cash from the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of the Townscape Heritage Initiative in 2000 and is now preparing to submit a further bid to secure the cash.

The money must be spent within an agreed and designated conservation area. And plans are afoot to extend the current Whitefield conservation area so key buildings can gain from the money.

St Mary's Church is one of the buildings expected to benefit from the cash injection.

The work on the bid will tie in closely to that being done by the Prince's Foundation - a charity promoting good urban design and architecture - which is looking at how to improve Whitefield and Nelson town centre.

The foundation is launching an 'inquiry by design' scheme in the area which gets residents, businesses, town planners and professionals to work together on design of specific sites. Workshops will be held later this month

Whitefield community action group chairman Sylvia Wilson said: "Everybody will be able to come in and work out what they want for the ward and town centre.

"We are hoping they are going to come up with something a lot more heritage-based rather than going in there, knocking several streets down and leaving them open as green areas."

Nelson is one of the areas covered by the housing market renewal programme in East Lancashire and a £1.4million repair scheme is already under way in the St Mary's conservation area.