TAKING the helm of the thriving East Lancashire Partnership and ushering it into the New Year is former Bury Council chief executive Dennis Taylor.

He has been appointed the interim director of the Partnership which comprises a number of local authorities and businesses.

After taking early retirement from Bury Council in 2001, Mr Taylor established the Greater Manchester-based public sector and environmental consultancy DETA Associates Ltd.

Mr Taylor, who lives in Bury, is no stranger to East Lancashire, having undertaken assignments across the county for his company and as an adviser to the Government's Waste & Resources Action Programme.

Married with two sons, he is also chairman of the Bury Groundwork Trust and a member of East Lancashire Groundwork chairman's group. He is a director of Eccleston-based Mawdsley Consultancy, leading the public sector recruitment division, and is retained by the London and Manchester-based Staniforth Communications Group.

An avid supporter of Sunderland FC and environmental issues, Mr Taylor is a former president of the Institute of Wastes Management and a director of the Tidy Britain Group and until recently was company secretary of the East Lancashire Railway Trust.

He takes over as director of the Accrington-based East Lancashire Partnership following the secondment of the present incumbent John Titley to the North West Regional Assembly.