THE final details of the controversial sale of Pendle Council's half share in Burnley and Pendle Transport have been agreed and contracts exchanged.

The council's Liberal administration said the move to sell to bus giant Stagecoach was a good deal and the £2 million price tag was at the top end of what the council was expecting to get.

Council leader Alan Davies said: "Bus travellers will find during the coming year that the same number of buses are running on the same routes at the same fares with the same drivers who will be getting the same wages."

He said the sale opened up opportunities for a large new investment in the buses, something that cash-strapped Burnley and Pendle councils were not able to do.

Coun Davies also expressed regret that Labour-controlled Burnley Council, which owns the other half of the company and who strongly opposed any sale, had not joined Pendle.

"Burnley Council is deliberately selling their council taxpayers short and undermining the interests of the bus workforce by their stubborn attitude," he said.

"They are just playing party politics with public money and jobs."

Coun Davies predicted Burnley would sell its shares, and possibly at a much worse price than the one currently on offer from Stagecoach.

Pendle's deputy leader, Coun Tony Greaves, added: "Burnley councillors have built a Berlin Wall between Burnley and Pendle.

"We asked them to meet us as long ago as November to talk about pension arrangements.

"But instead of taking care of the interests of the workforce they have just behaved in a quite extraordinary and irrational way."

He added: "There is no doubt that what Pendle Council has done is best for bus passengers and services, best for investment in local buses, best for the development of services in the future, and best for Council taxpayers and residents of Pendle."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.