COUNCIL chiefs have virtually no cash to meet the estimated £1.4 million cost of tackling Pendle's sinking back streets, it was revealed today.

And councillors have been told that the local authority cannot legally carry out the work even if it had the money.

The Lancashire Evening Telegraph revealed last week that hundreds of redundant Victorian drains across the borough were collapsing, leaving deep depressions in back streets.

But Pendle Council has no money to cover the cost of tackling the problem and legal officers' advice is that even if it had it would not be able to carry out the work because repairing the mainly private drains is not the council's responsibility.

The authority has set aside £4,250 to carry out emergency repairs to dangerous unmade streets while the total drains bill could come to £1.4million.

A move by Conservative councillor Roger Abbiss to persuade the council's resource management committee to increase the budget to allow householders to apply for 75 per cent grants towards repair work on collapsing drains was defeated on Tuesday.

Instead, the authority's services committee will look again at the issue and the council will take independent legal advice on what it can and cannot do to tackle the problem.

The problem arises in Victorian terraced homes which formerly had an outside toilet connected to a sewer running along the back street. Joints in many of the 100-year-old underground pipes have since opened up and allowed the surrounding earth to be washed away into the sewer causing holes to open up under the cobbles and the street to collapse.

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