ANGRY residents are demanding face-to-face talks with council officials over continuing delays for regeneration works in Brierfield.

People living off Clitheroe Road said they were fed up that, after five years, no substantial progress has been made with a major housing market renewal to the west of the town centre.

Housing officials admit the scheme, drawn up with Miller Regeneration, which has seen hundreds of homes demolished, has gone back to the drawing board.

But they insist, because of the ongoing economic crisis, that the Brierfield Canal Corridor plans, promising new three and four bedroom homes, must represent better ‘value for money’.

Residents in Clitheroe Road have wrote to borough council chief executive Stephen Barnes over the hold-ups, asking for a fuller explanation.

Azhar Ali told a Brierfield and Reedley committee meeting: “This has been going on for five or six years and residents are sick and tired of broken promises.

“Housing market regeneration was supposed to breathe new life into areas, not destroy them. People are being kept in the dark and we don’t want to be mushrooms any more.”

Committee chairman Coun Tonia Barton said: “This has been dragging on for far too long and I think the residents there are feeling very shabbily treated.”

Coun Naeem Ashraf added: “The resident have been pushed from pillar to post, one minute they can see light at the end of the tunnel and then it is taken away from them.”

The first phase of works was scheduled for Holden Road and included a row of three-storey townhouses on the banks of the Leeds Liverpool Canal.

Julie Palmer, the council’s housing programmes manager, said: “We are continuing to negotiate with Miller and trying to bring forward the first phase of the scheme.

“However we cannot move the scheme further forward until we have got it to represent value for money.”

Regeneration schemes across the UK had either been mothballed or housing authorities had been forced to bid for gap funding from public sources, to ensure they remained on course, she told councillors.

Councillors voted for talks to take place between residents and officials as quickly as possible.