[Gayle]

Answer to question about tender.

I'm in an area that I don't know a lot about at this stage so I'll tell you what I know has happened in other areas. Because of the complexity of the projects, contractors have been told what the end result is and what the proposed material is. They have also been told the budget. They have then come back to the Council with their proposals. In the case of Hyndburn we will undoubtedly tell them we want to minimise the damage to the trenches and pathways. The exact ins and outs of how they do that will need to be defined with the contractors. At this point we don't even know if it's going to be dug mechanically or by hand so it's almost impossible to say what impact the digging will have.

I think we're in danger of getting ahead of ourselves here. As I've said before the project in Hyndburn is still in its infancy. We should be talking about the general picture, i.e. site, aesthetics and rationale behind the project. We're getting a bit bogged down with specific detail that we can't possibly know for certain at this stage.