EAST Lancashire has long featured strongly at the wrong end of league tables highlighting the problem of teenage pregnancies.

The social problems caused when teenagers have unplanned babies are well known.

Lost education, career opportunities, housing problems and financial poverty mean young mothers inevitably find themselves on a downward spiral of deprivation.

Statistically their children are then likely to find themselves facing the same problems as they grow up - and so the cycle continues.

It is then very heartening to see today that the battle to reduce some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the country is beginning to be won.

In Burnley the teenage conception rate has fallen in three years from 74.1 per 1000 to 58.4 and in Blackburn with Darwen it is down from 55 to 45.8 in just one year.

To the Lancashire Teenage Pregnancy Partnership the drop is proof that they are moving towards meeting a target of halving teenage conceptions by 2010.

Success is being achieved not by diktat so much as improved education, services and support.

There is no room for complacency and a lot still has to be done to stop lives being blighted by situations that often arise out of ignorance.

But these figures show real progress is being made.