DREAMS of transforming Bury's town centre open spaces with a £13.6million scheme have been left in tatters. Less than a month after submitting the plans, the council has been told by the Millennium Commission that its £5.5M bid for money towards the cost has been rejected because of "the intensity of competition for funds". The decision has come as bitter blow to the Council, which had hoped to tie in the scheme involving the four former market places in the town centre with another £5m project, spread over the next three years, to revamp and massively improve Bury's famous modern-day market. That project is still going ahead.

Bury Council Leader, Cllr John Byrne said: "Our bid was all on the theme of making spaces for people.

"However, when it comes to obtaining funding, it seems that there is no space for Bury. We are very disappointed but more so by the fact that the rejection was almost out of hand. We think that our project deserved far greater consideration and should not have been dismissed in this manner. A lot of effort has gone into producing the bid and we felt that it was a significant scheme which would have had a stunning impact on the town centre area of Bury.

"We wanted to build on the town's rich history as a trading centre and now our chances of doing that look to have disappeared. It is a blow for Bury but we are used to such knockbacks and it is a case of picking ourselves up and going forward from here."

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