BOLTON and Bury have been dealt a double Millennium cash blow.

Neither town will receive a penny from the national Millennium Festival handout towards their year 2000 celebrations.

Shocked Bolton town hall chiefs were today "bitterly disappointed" that a £190,000 bid has been rejected.

But they have vowed that the Millennium WILL be celebrated, even though it will need a massive injection of private cash.

They are also set to call on the town's three MPs to lobby Culture Secretary Chris Smith to change his mind.

Bolton and Bury were also involved in a £300,000 bid for a countywide street festival which has also been turned down.

The decision also means that Bury also has no specially-funded Millennium events after its historic Woodbury sailing trip to America was also turned down. Meanwhile, events in central Manchester, Salford, Wigan and Tameside will share in a £100 million pot which is being distributed across the country to local councils. Blackburn has also had an £80,000 bid approved for an event of 50 themed weeks during the year, such as a Spanish week, a Dutch and Belgian week and a 1940s week.

The news means that a question mark now hangs over the future of three major schemes which were planned for Bolton in a project called Celebrating All Our Yesterdays, Todays and Tomorrows. They were Mass Aspirations which would have been a video archive of life in Bolton in the year 2000.

It would have been an update of the famous Mass Observation project of 1937-40 which recorded life in pictures in Bolton.

There were also plans for Expo 2000 which would have been a major environmental exhibition and the rest of the money would have gone towards individual events.

A council spokesman said: "We are all bitterly disappointed, but we haven't given up, nevertheless, there will still be celebrations but it will require sponsorship."

A letter sent to Bolton Council's Millennium co-ordinator Norma Rutherford from director of the Millennium Exhibition and Festival John McCarthy said: "The volume of applications was high and given the range and quality of applications, the competition was strong. "Applications were appraised in relation to a number of factors, including the quality of the proposals and their compliance with the published festival themes and core criteria, distinctiveness, value for money and geographical and calendar spread.

"It was decided that other applications better met the Commission's aims for the Millennium Festival within limited funding available.

"I appreciate that this news will be disappointing to you and the team behind the application.

"I hope the momentum you have built up and the partnership support you have identified can help the project or part of it progress even though Millennium Commission funds will not be available." Cllr Bob Howarth, Bolton Council leader, said: "It is disappointing, but all is not lost.

"We shall be contacting the MPs to lobby Chris Smith.

"But we have to accept he is unlikely to change his mind and we will have to cut our cloth accordingly and we are currently in discussions with private operators and other organisations."

Dr Brian Iddon, Bolton South-east MP said: "I was surprised Bolton was excluded from the list.

"When the council contacts me, I shall meet with the other MPs and try to arrange a meeting with Chris Smith."

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