FROM a business point of view, the initiative by Burnley and Padiham community housing to fill empty former council houses -- of which the borough has hundreds -- by touting them to Londoners is understandable.

After all, the glut of more than 400 unoccupied homes amounts to vast sums in rental income not being realised.

It's a problem that's long dogged Burnley, which a couple of years ago stood unenviably at the top of a league of more than 300 local authorities with the highest percentage of vacant homes in the country.

The situation is hardly any better now that the council has handed over its housing stock to the new community housing undertaking.

Despite a drop of 100 in the number of unlet houses since Christmas, the total unoccupied is roughly the same as it was then.

But considering that when the council was wrestling in vain with the problem, it actually had a long waiting list of would-be tenants, it was evident that the numerous empty ones were those in areas which applicants considered undesirable.

So why should people living in London find them any more appealing?

As I said, from a financial point of view, it is clear why community housing managers hope they do. But what about the social aspects of this drive to lure tenants from the capital -- have they been taken into account?

We hear that London has 48,000 people who have been in temporary accommodation for 18 months to two years and some for even longer. And in just the borough of Haringey alone, it costs £800,000 a year to keep people in bed and breakfast accommodation.

And speaking of the 'Come and live in Burnley' initiative, Burnley and Padiham community housing manager Martin Sample says: "It is in their interest to work with us."

Too right, it is -- if they can export droves of expensive claimants to East Lancashire.

But what sort of people end up in bed and breakfasts to start with? Are they not social casualties with problems of the sort that our region has plenty to begin with?

Only last year, it was revealed that claimants in Burnley alone draw £24million a year in housing and council tax benefits and that 65 per cent of all tenants in the town pay no rent at all.

Will not this bid to fill up the houses no-one here wants only swell that drain on the welfare system? And what of the impact on public services of importing the capital's poor bed-and-breakfast dwellers? Is it that Burnley is awash with unfilled jobs, school places, nursery accommodation and hospital beds?

Surely, some reassuring answers are wanted to such questions before taxpayers bless the business of improving Burnley and Padiham community housing's balance sheet.

I mean, it's not their well-heeled yuppie rent-payers that the likes of Westminster and Haringey are being encouraged to send us, is it?