WHETHER you believe the controversial claim that £350 million a week is siphoned out of your taxes to pay for Brussels bureaucrats or not, the question of how much EU cash comes back to East Lancashire will be of interest as you prepare to cast your vote in the EU referendum a week on Thursday.

On the face of it our towns, boroughs and transport network have done very well out of Europe’s structural and social cash pots.

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The M65 motorway was only built with millions from its Regional Development Fund that local politicians could never extract from Westminster and Whitehall.

Large sums have recently supported the Burnley Bridge Business Park, Blackburn’s Cathedral Quarter and even Samlesbury War Memorial Hall.

Remain supporters say this source of cash direct to English regions will dry up if we leave.

Brexit campaigners believe the cash returned to the UK, minus Euro-costs, will still spread North to continue the transformation of our one-time backwater into a mainstream national economic player.

Britain Stronger in Europe estimates that between 2015 and 2020 Lancashire is in line for a guaranteed £218 million of EU cash grants.

Paul White, Pendle councillor and North West regional director for Vote Leave, disagrees.

Although he admits the county received £96 million of EU cash between 2007 and 2013, he claims it is spent in the wrong places.

He said: “The EU costs the North West of England £1.54 billion a year – enough to buy a new hospital every three months.

“That £1.54 billion is nearly 13 times the highways’ maintenance budget in the North West, and our roads are in a terrible state.

“Were the UK to vote leave, I will be fighting for millions of pounds of that money to be spent on public transport in Lancashire.

“We’ve just seen £5 million of cuts to bus routes, which are paralysing communities.

“I want to see a well-connected Lancashire right across the county, from villages to cities.

“During the period 2007-2013, Lancashire received £96.5 million from the European Structural Funds Programme, which included £16.5 million for Lancashire County Council for Superfast Broadband, £2.6 million to the University of Central Lancashire for developing wind turbine technology, and more than £1 million to Blackpool Council for the light switch-on.

“Some of these schemes, particularly the Superfast Broadband one, have been great.

“Are others, like Blackpool’s ‘Tower Headland Festival’, really where the residents of Lancashire want their money spending?

“The idea that this money was given to us by the EU is quite frankly bonkers.

“There is no such thing as EU money, every penny spent on these projects comes from the wallets of British taxpayers.

“European funding paid £2.1 million for renovations to Nelson town centre.

“This work was undertaken in 2011, and conditions in the town have not improved since.

“This one project alone shows that the EU don’t know what they are doing with public funds.

“The bureaucrats in Brussels do not understand the people of the North West, and that showed it, because if you’d walked on to the street of Pendle before that work and asked every single person what their local priority was I doubt one single person would have said this.

“The people of Lancashire know when they’re getting a bad deal.

“They know it’s time to take back control and fight for that money to be invested here.”

Ribble Valley councillor Ken Hind disputes almost every one of his Conservative Party colleague’s claims.

The Lancashire organiser for Britain Stronger in Europe said: “The Brexit claim the UK pays £350 million a week to the EU is totally inaccurate, as shown by the by the Office of National Statistics.

“The idea behind this claim is to show to the public that leaving the EU will provide Brexit Bonus which can be spent on other things if we leave.

“Lancashire has received £96 million of EU funds in the last few years.

“The actual figure we spend on EU membership is £35.7 million a day, £250 million a week.

“Brexit ignores the fact that EU countries invest £66 million a day in the UK, nearly twice as much in investment which creates jobs financial security and prosperity.

“We need to add the trading advantages of being in a free ‘Single Market’.

“If one million people lose their jobs from the 30 million-plus workforce, this will swallow the £250 million a week we currently pay to the EU and more.

“In 2015 total public spending was £748 billion,” he said.

“The cost of being a member of the EU is just over one per cent of that.

“Recession will produce loss of profits to businesses and companies.

“Less tax paid means any ‘Brexit Bonus’ will be needed to fill the gaps in government spending.

“The fact is there will be no extra money to spend on health if we leave the EU.”

Former Blackburn MP Jack Straw, who campaigned to quit in 1975’s Euro-referendum, said: “If we leave, we cannot guarantee the money we get from Brussels will come from London instead.

“In the 1980’s the Government scrapped major regional assistance programmes while the EU continued to provide cash for vital projects in North-East Lancashire.”

He and Dr Wollaston may have changed their minds, but do the figures have any effect on ordinary voters?

Next week the key issue will not only be how much you trust the statistics of the two opposing campaigns.

Equally important is whether you trust politicians and civil servants in London or those in Brussels more to spend your taxes on key schemes that make a difference to lives in East Lancashire.