BLACKBURN’S financial future is dependent on being open for property developers, council chiefs said.

Borough regeneration chief, Cllr Phil Riley, told members at the council’s planning and highways committee that the medium term financial plan was dependent on extra cash from new homes bonuses, as well as council tax from bringing more people to live in Blackburn with Darwen.

He said: “As a council, we are not going to apologise for the fact that we have got a growth agenda. We could not run this borough in the way we want to if we did not look to grow.

“We have lost £148 million in government funding since 2010 and that is a lot of money for a borough the size of Blackburn with Darwen.”

Cllr Riley’s Tory counterpart, Cllr Derek Hardman, said he was concerned there would be no green space left in the borough to attract new residents in if building continued at the current pace.

He added: “We should be leaving some green space because we are not going to have any left if we aren’t careful.

“We are going to concrete over everything and we won’t have anything to attract people in.”

Current figures show the council needs to build 188 new homes every year to meet the 942-home five year local housing need set by government.

At the moment, the council has a 9.9 year supply of deliverable housing over the period 2019-2024 based on the target requirement of 188 homes.

Chairman of the council's planning and highways committee, Cllr Dave Smith, said: "We have got to work within our government targets whether we like it or not.

"With the last local plan we had a housing figure and the Planning Inspectorate told us there was not enough green land allocated for housing.

"We had to put sites forward for an extra 1,000 homes on green land.

"With the figures at the moment, we will be able to have a bit more flexibility.

"The 450 homes at Brokenstone Road go a fair way to the numbers that we need and we still have lots of green belt we won't need to allocate for housing.

"There is Tockholes, Darwen Moors, around Pleasington - hopefully those areas will be secured as green land for the future."

Council planners are busy working on the next local plan, which will identify new sites for housing and employment growth.

Planning manager Gavin Prescott said the current timetable for publication was towards the end of 2021/22.