THE managing director of a company which has announced it will bring 600 new jobs to East Lancashire today said the figure could double within a year.

And in a second vote of confidence for the town, the owner of Padiham's booming Shuttleworth Mead business park today revealed how he could fill the industrial estate again if he was given the chance.

Ken Ingham, a partner of Ribble Estates -- the company behind Shuttleworth Mead -- said the park had the potential to double in size.

Almost 1,000 jobs have already been created on the former Padiham power station site and developers are confident the figure will rise because of it's location and proximity to the motorway network.

Mr Ingham said: "We have a plot of land roughly the same size as that already developed at Shuttleworth Mead which lies alongside the current estate.

"If that land was developed in the same way we would have no problem filling the units."

Managing director of Homeloan Management (HML) Steve Haggerty agreed the area was attractive for companies looking to expand.

He spoke out after HML, a subsidiary of Skipton Building Society, bought 20,000sq ft at Shuttleworth Mead.

Mr Haggerty said Shuttleworth provided easy access to the motorway network and good recruitment prospects to employee people from the area.

He said: "Our deal with GMAC will mean that people will sit up and take notice. Others will follow suit and if we need to expand further we will be looking at East Lancashire.

"GMAC will be one of the top ten lenders in the United Kingdom this year and I think it will be the start of something big. We could double in size.

"We have always been regarded as a niche company, but by the end of this year looking ahead to the first quarter of the next financial year we are going to have around £20 billion of mortgages under administration.

"We have always been looking at East Lancashire. We knew that we could only grow to within a certain size in Skipton and that we would have to expand elsewhere.

"East Lancashire is only 40 minutes away from our base, we can get there quickly and we already have a lot of people who commute that way."

The company carries out administration work for national mortgage lenders and has recently singed a contract with GMAC, an American corporation linked to General Motors and one of the world's largest vehicle manufacturers.

GMAC has 29,000 employees in 40 countries and currently has mortgage assets of $180 billion and the contract is the reason behind the announcement of 600 new jobs at their site in Shuttleworth Mead.

But the company's management team today said they were expecting more.