IN recent years, East Lancashire has grown used to many kinds of traffic schemes designed to slow down traffic and make the roads safer -- from humps and mini-roundabouts to chicanes and 20 mph speed limits.

But now comes a traffic engineering first for the region that promises not only to improve road safety, but also to bring a better quality of life to hundreds of residents -- by giving them, not cars, priority in the streets where they live.

For work is to begin soon on East Lancashire's first Home Zone -- in Blackburn's Audley area. And consultation has already taken place with residents in south west Burnley, where a similar zone is planned, covering eight streets in the Hargher Clough area.

But in addition to already-familiar measures such as road narrowing, Home Zones can also entail the complete exclusion of cars from some streets -- with them being accommodated instead in new, secure car parks.

The aim is not only to make the streets safer by separating residents from traffic, but to return them to what they were in the days before they were choked by parked vehicles and subjected to the continual coming and going of cars. And that is, places where children could play in safety within sight of their homes and parents and neighbours could meet and socialise.

Home Zones promise, then, to rebuild and strengthen the sense of community in the areas where they are created.

Do they work? Pilot schemes in Oxford have proved a success and they have been so effective in Holland, where they were introduced years ago, that it is hoped that every residential street there will in a Home Zone by 2006.

Now, it could be East Lancashire's turn to have its streets handed back to the people who live in them.