AS A SPATE of profit warnings and jobs cuts on both sides of the Atlantic trigger fears of recession and send shares plunging in panic selling on the Stock Market, for the second time in a week the trend in East Lancashire heads encouragingly in the other direction.

For hard on the heels of the Capita deal promising 500 office jobs at a new Blackburn business services centre comes the announcement of up to 300 new jobs being created in Accrington.

And the latest employment boost, brought by the Yorkshire-based quality-control firm Brand Support Services, is extra-welcome -- as the firm moves into the same factory where just months ago more than 500 jobs were lost in a bitter blow to Hyndburn.

For the company is taking over the former Lucas Rists plant which was shut soon after new German owners Leoni took its order book and jobs to Romania. Now the hope is that former Rists' employees will be among those taken on to help Brand Support Services expand in Hyndburn.

And even more jobs may follow as the company re-opens the giant factory as it plans to sub-let 40 per cent. of the building to other businesses.

It may that if economic downturn develops, as Stock Market investors fear, East Lancashire has no guarantee of immunity, but, even in the face of that grim prospect, these new job announcements and the catalyst that they promise to be for more are welcome developments that may help our region weather a recession better than any in the past.

Certainly, welcome armour is provided by the facts that major job expansions are still taking place here, that the area's unemployment rate is already lower than the regional average and that its economic base is becoming more diversified.

And as the chill winds of recession gather, long may this encouraging trend continue in East Lancashire.