TALKS began today to try to rescue some of the long term plans for Rivington's Lever Park after yesterday's bomshell news that the centrepiece Blue Planet centre had been scrapped.

But dejected members of Rivington Heritage Trust - the body given the task of steering through the scheme - remain determined to see at least some of the ambitious plans through.

The major setback came yesterday with the announcement that the Blue Planet Exhibition Centre had failed to attract vital Millennium Commission funding.

It was to be the key feature in a massive scheme by North West Water to restore and preserve the parkland left to the people of Bolton by Lord Leverhulme.

Yesterday's announcement that the centre, which was to be located outside Lever Park on derelict land at Rivington Water Treatment Works, would not be supported by Millennium cash has thrown the entire £15million scheme in doubt.

Pauline Roscoe, managing agent who led the consultancy team which drew up the plan, said NWW was keeping its options open but would have to reassess the proposals.

"We always said that if one element was taken out, there would be repercussions on the whole scheme," she said.

Against a background of concerted local opposition to some of their plans, NWW mounted a bid for half of the cost of the project, and were putting up the other £7.5 million.

Their plans included the restoration of the terraced gardens created in the early 1900s by Lord Leverhulme, landscape enhancement, improved facilities for water sports, cycling, riding and walking and a traffic management scheme.

A charitable trust - the Rivington Heritage Trust - was set up which, if the bid was successful, would receive the funding to manage the restoration project.

It was envisaged that the "The Blue Planet" which would be run by the Trust, would have generated revenue from visitors. And some of that cash would be used to maintain the restored terraced gardens and to fund further improvements to the park.

The centre was to have been educational, free to school parties, telling the world-wide story of water, demonstrating in a fun and educational way the importance of conserving and managing water. The plans were to build it within the sunken redundant filter bed site at the treatment plant, and partially hide it from view using an earth-sheltered construction. The centre would include education rooms, a roof-top restaurant, water theatre, imaginative landscaping as well as a car park, where visitors could then move on into the park via a park and ride service. An artist's impression of the renovated Italian gardens at Rivington THE CASE AGAINST NORTH West Water floated its far-reaching plans last summer but they were met with opposition from local residents and conservation groups whose biggest fear was that the proposals would mean the commercialisation of the park, which for many years had been freely open to the public. Horwich Council also expressed concern about traffic problems.

The most controversial of the plans was the proposed new Lever Park Act which NWW is promoting in Parliament to extend the protection of the public trust of 1902, to include the terraced gardens, which are not covered at present. The Act would enable NWW to lease Lever Park to the Heritage Trust.

But opponents feared the changes would give NWW more powers over Lever Park than it already has under the terms of the present legislation, and remove existing protection. They were also alarmed at the make-up of the trust whose 13 members would include five employees of NWW and two non-executive directors appointed by them.

Despite public consultation exercises and a public exhibition at Rivington Hall Barn, many of the objectors remained unconvinced, and in January this year the Bill suffered a major setback in the Commons when six MPs united in a blocking motion, delaying debate for at least six months.

Mrs Roscoe said it was never the intention of NWW to do anything but enhance the gardens and park, and stressed that the proposals did not include any commercialisation within the park.

"Unfortunately a small minority were intent on objecting and grabbed the attention of the media," she said.

She said that the plans would have protected the park for the next 125 years, but now that was in jeopardy.

"We are trying not to be too downhearted. We will look at it positively and hopefully we will be able to resurrect something from it but it is very complex."

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