ONE hundred people a year - twice the national average - die from drink-related illnesses in East Lancashire, it was revealed today.

Officials blamed the figures on the area's drink culture and said primary school children are to be given alcohol education in a bid to prevent another generation being blighted.

They said the area needed to follow the lead of cities such as Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds, which are moving away from the nothern stereotype of: Get paid - get drunk.

Council bosses - responsible with the police for community safety - have pledged to help make access to vital support services more readily available.

Department of Health figures show that from 2001 to 2003, 10.9 people in every 100,000 died from deaths attributed to alcohol-related diseases, poisoning and behavioural disorders each year.

In the same period, an average of 96 people a year lost their lives in East Lancashire - 20 people in every 100,000.

Thirty people died each year in Blackburn with Darwen, 19 in Burnley, 15 in Pendle, 14 in Hyndburn, 11 in Rossendale and seven in the Ribble Valley - the most affluent areas of East Lancashire.

It is the first time the figures have been collated but they demonstrate the traditional problems with alcohol in East Lancashire.

A spokesman for Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust said: "The Primary Care Trust is working to make sure that support for people with alcohol related problems is provided.

"The PCT is also actively involved in the work of the Community Safety Partnership which, through its Crime Reduction Strategy, is working hard to reduce the adverse effects of binge drinking amongst young people."

Sharon Kemp, who co-ordinates the community safety partnership at Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: "As well as improving access to services, we want to make sure young people have all the facts about alcohol and other substance misuse.

"This will include going into primary schools to start education at an early age so youngsters have all the information they need to make informed choices."

Tory councillor Paul McGurty said: "It is all OK to talk about the past, but it's the future we need to work on. We need to make sure the youngsters drinking alcopops turning town centres into no-go zones at weekends know what they are doing to their health."

Prof John Ashton, Director of Public Health in the North West, blamed binge drinking cultures and said: "People drink more in the North and North West. The context is a history of industrial, working class cities and sea ports where, when people had money, they spent it.

"They worked hard and played hard and we haven't really moved on from that.

"We are about 10 years from being where we would like to be, where cities like Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle are on a par with European cities where they enjoy a drink but don't go out to get really drunk."

Srabani Sen, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said: "If the Government is serious about achieving genuine change around alcohol it needs to put in place a Tsar to pull together all the different threads of policy. That is the only way we can tackle the causes of alcohol-related harm."

Hyndburn MP Greg Pope, said: "No-one wants to be a killjoy and people should be able to enjoy alcohol sensibly and responsibly, but the problem is they don't realise the dangers.

"We must work to make sure that all our young people are aware of the facts surrounding alcohol."

And Jon Royle, Lancashire area director for charity Alcohol and Drug Services said: "The Government has issued an alcohol strategy but no money to accompany it. We need to get to the people who are not past the stage of irreversible damage to stop them becoming another death statistic."