PROTESTORS in Barnoldswick sent out a clear message to Lancashire County Council when they held a mass rally on Saturday.

"Don't close Cravenside!" was the chant echoing around the Town Square, with the crowd cheering calls for the authority to abandon its closure proposals.

As reported previously, the county council has unveiled plans to close or sell 35 of its 48 care homes, including the purpose-built Cravenside at Barnoldswick. Currently out to public consultation, the proposals have struck fear into residents of the homes, many of whom have nowhere to go.

However, the county council has given an assurance that no-one currently resident in any of its homes will be made homeless.

Even so the proposals have sparked widespread opposition. Action groups have been formed, thousands of signatures collected on petitions and Lancashire MPs - including Pendle's Gordon Prentice - have condemned the proposals in the House of Commons.

Mr Prentice, who lives in Barnoldswick, was one of the speakers at Saturday's rally, assuring the crowd he would try to persuade Labour colleagues at County Hall to rethink their plans.

He was joined on the platform by Labour leader of Pendle Council, Coun Azhar Ali, and West Craven's Liberal Democrat county councillor David Whipp. He is calling for the authority to abandon its closure plans and look instead at improving care for the elderly.

Speaking after the rally, Coun Whipp said he had been impressed by the strength of feeling demonstrated there, adding that it could only boost the anti-closure campaign.

Last week the Liberal Democrat spokesman on social services, Paul Burstow MP, visited Cravenside as part of a fact-finding tour of the area. He talked with residents there and in other homes across Pendle and Lancashire, hearing their deep concerns about the closure proposals.

Now he is planning to table an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons to discuss the closure plans and call for them to be scrapped.

Following on from Saturday's protest, Pendle Council's West Craven committee is organising a public meeting on the future of Cravenside and inviting representatives of the county council to come and hear local views.

The meeting will be held next Thursday, April 25, at West Craven High Technology College, Barnoldswick, at 7pm. Anyone interested in the issue is urged to go along and make their views known.

Meanwhile, the Lancashire Care Association (LCA) is mounting a legal challenge to the county council's proposals at the High Court of Justice in London.

A letter intimating the nature of the action has been lodged with the council on behalf of the LCA, which represents more than 400 private care homes in the county.

It has warned that it will seek a Judicial Review of the recent actions taken by Lancashire County Council on the placement of elderly people and the council's policy to restrict fee levels to an amount that does not cover the cost of providing proper care.

Solicitors will ask the court to quash the council's decisions on the grounds that they were irrational and unlawful. The LCA believes the council's decisions put their elderly residents' welfare at risk and are therefore in breach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Chairman of the LCA, Frank Hessey, said: "This is the latest move in our campaign to stop Lancashire County Council continuing to place our ageing population at risk and denying the security of high-quality residential care for the frail and elderly of the county.

"Apart from the continuing worry and anxiety to elderly people and their families, the council's actions remain a threat to 15,000 dedicated and hard-working people who are employed in both council and private homes."