DETAILS of the amount of public money spent on Weavers' Triangle schemes in Burnley should be available next month - five months after a councillor demanded them.

Independent group leader Harry Brooks branded the town hall delay as "maladministration of the worst kind" and "totally unacceptable" after repeated calls for the information on projects like Slater Terrace and Clock Tower Mill failed to bring a response.

Coun Brooks, who says the Weavers' Triangle projects have descended into farce, has received a town hall apology and a promise that the information should be available to the next finance committee meeting on June 22.

The councillor called for details in January, when it was revealed that more than £500,000 of public funding had been poured into external improvements to the Slater Terrace weavers' cottages, earmarked for conversion to a 45-bed hotel.

Work on that scheme has been at a standstill for years and the buildings have been vandalised.

Clock Tower Mill has been a burned-out shell for a decade, with no sign of improvement, despite many promises, said Coun Brooks.

Both sites, among others in the area, are owned by Liverpool-based Mill View developments, which announced recently that companies earmarked to take over the proposed £2.5 million hotel had pulled out and Mill View was now looking at alternative uses for both Slater Terrace and the Clock Tower site. In November 1997, former Civic Trust chairman Lynn Millard, a critic of the Weavers' Triangle schemes, received a letter from Burnley Council's director of development David Brown, outlining spending on the terrace to that date.

It showed the council had spent £200,000 of European Regional Development Fund cash, with a further £344,795 English Heritage grant, all on external improvements.

Burnley council itself had put £50,000 into the scheme.

Said Coun Brooks: "I want to know just how much has been spent and when so much of it appears to have been aborted.

"If the true story of the false starts, public money spent and time wasted went before the people of Burnley, there would be great concern."

In January when Coun Brooks called for information he was also promised news of new development plans for the site within two weeks.

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