CASH-STRAPPED Burnley council will splash out more than £34,000 to fight poverty in the town this year - if it can find the money to finance the project.

Official figures show Burnley is the 57th most deprived local council area in the country and Labour leaders aim to launch a new anti-poverty strategy to make life better for the poor.

Wide-ranging initiatives include cutting fees and charges for services to the needy, offering advice on cash and benefits, helping people to get back to work and even bidding for Euro-cash to benefit those in most need.

Burnley aims to appoint an anti poverty strategy development officer to spearhead the fight.

The council plans to look closely at the implications of all its day-to-day decisions and how they will affect poverty and deprivation.

A lengthy report to the powerful policy committee says the strategy will involve working closely with many other help agencies to ensures that services are "accessible, relevant and responsive, minimising the impact of poverty."

The report calls for "action against social exclusion and social injustice, by listening to and involving the people who are in greatest need, assisting them to take an active role in developing ways of improving the quality of their own lives."

Options also include running creches so parents can go to work, and helping groups to set up community cafes for cheap food, day care nurseries, a co-operative laundry service and community transport. Credit unions should be developed, welfare and immigration advice provided and debt counselling given, says the report.

The council would also aim to help create an anti-poverty forum for the whole of Lancashire.

The report says certain groups are more likely to suffer poverty than others.

These include the elderly, lone parents, large families, the unemployed and people with low educational attainment.

But doubt hangs over whether Burnley has the cash to get the strategy under way this year.

With more than £500,000 to cut from budgets to meet government spending targets, Labour leaders will struggle to find the money for the extra service.

If it does, the strategy will take at least one person out of the poverty league - the new anti-poverty officer will have a £17,000 salary, £800 car mileage cash, £500 new office furniture, a £2,000 computer and a £10,000-a-year operating budget.

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