ROUND one to the residents, as planning chiefs at Blackburn defer a decision on a controversial bid to build a mock-Tudor apartment block on the former Heathfield School site.

For the battle put up by the Blackburn Meins Road Area Residents' Association has not only been intelligent, articulate and evidently potent - as they have employed experts and waved writs in their tussle with the council - it has been a model of middle-class protest in action.

But the price has been steep - to get this far has cost the residents more than £40,000.

Still, if victory becomes theirs, they might recoup the outlay - by boiling the experience down into a sought-after Handbook for Nimbies.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.