EAST Lancashire leaders have been trying to promote the Pennine Lancashire brand for two or three years now.

It still hasn’t been adopted by the vast majority of ordinary people even though councils and other leading agencies have taken it on.

The branding has a lot of things going for it. It is more evocative than ‘East Lancashire’ and has a greater chance of capturing the imagination of investors from the rest of the UK and the world.

What it really needs to get airborne is some concrete Pennine Lancashire successes.

So it is heartening today to get the news of the £200million investment, and the next task is to identify which projects will benefit.

The Telegraph’s view is that the whole Pennine Lancashire movement is a very good thing.

We are always in the shadow of Manchester and Liverpool when it comes to inward investment and it is hard to convince the Government and investors that we are the equal of these centres.

But we are, and we are just as big. We just don’t happen to be contained within one urban hub.

East Lancashire has had a raw deal for years.

The Pennine Lancashire organisation is the best chance we have of ending that injustice.