BOLTON and Bury have been offered a glimmer of hope that they could have some cash help towards their millennium celebrations. But it will be less than £5,000 and it will still leave a huge amount of money to be found from local businesses, council budgets and from other organisations. The bids will have to be submitted by individual local organisations rather than a borough-wide bid.

As reported yesterday, Bolton and Bury did not receive a penny from the first round of a £100 million Millennium Festival Fund handout announced by Culture Secretary Chris Smith.

There was £53.7 million allocated for 1,149 projects nationwide of more than £5,000.

Bids will be invited for the rest of the cash from April, but they will only be for smaller amounts.

A Millennium Commission spokesman said that the number of applications for the first round exceeded the money available by nine to one.

She said: "There were some excellent applications and we had some very difficult decisions to make."

Archive

Bolton's £190,000 bid was in three parts - a video archive report of Bolton in the year 2000, an Expo 2000 environmental exhibition and the rest of the cash was for general celebrations.

The North-west region received £3.3 million for 92 projects. London received £4.8, the South-east £3.5 million.

The East Midlands received the highest regional award of £4.02 million.

In the North-west, the largest award was £300,000 for a millennium waterfronts project which involves major waterside festivals beginning on the millennium weekend and continuing throughout 2000.

There was also a £200,000 grant for a project called Manchester's Coming Home which is a heritage trail around Manchester city centre.

Wigan will receive £40,000 for a Mapping the Millennium Festival and Oldham £30,000 for a 'One World, One Oldham' exhibition.

Blackburn will receive £80,000 towards a 50 themed weeks event throughout 2000, such as a Dutch and Belgian week, Spanish week and a 1940s week.

But today Norma Rutherford, Bolton Council's millennium co-ordinator, vowed that the town will still be celebrating and the council has £150,000 set aside from its own budget.

She said: "Obviously we are disappointed. But it will not quell our enthusiasm to provide Bolton with an exciting millennium."

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