FIVE major projects in Pendle will get off the ground, thanks to £400,000 of funding.

The cash from the single regeneration budget fund will pay to create over 100 jobs, improve the number of young people entering further education and increase nursery places for two-year-olds.

It will also provide leisure and training opportunities for young people and clean up industrial grot-spots.

Pendle Partnership's Delivery Group will allocate the £400,000 over the next three years.

In the 'Business Support Initiative', 97 jobs are expected to be created in Pendle as a result of the windfall. Nine local businesses will share the cash.

More than 50 jobs will be created in the next year and 80 existing jobs will also be safeguarded.

A schools liaison officer will be employed at Nelson and Colne College as a result of the funding.

The officer will work with pupils at local schools in year 10 and 11 who may not have achieved the desired grades to enter further education.

The money will also fund a number of summer schools at the college to enable pupils to improve their careers, education and employment prospects.

The project will also help young people to learn how to maintain and repair cars and motorbikes in a project called 'Wheels within Wheels'.

It is hoped this vocational training will engage young people and prevent them getting involved in vandalism, noise and nuisance.

More than £50,000 of the fund will go to Offspring's nursery project which is part of McMillans Nursery School in Railway Street, Nelson.

The cash will reduce the shortage of nursery places for two-year-olds and subsidise childcare costs for people in the Bradley and Whitefield wards of Nelson unable to pay the full rate.

The money will also be used to employ a bilingual assistant at McMillans nursery school.

An industrial environmental project to improve industrial premises alongside residential areas and prominent sites adjacent to major traffic routes will also be given £12,000.

Dennis Mendoros, Pendle Partnership Chairman, said: "These five projects will make a big difference to people's lives in Pendle.

"There is nothing more important than creating jobs, helping our children and cleaning up the environment.

"Once again Pendle Partnerships has come up trumps, winning government money for Pendle and spending it on local priorities."