ANGRY council chiefs have still not received a penny towards the huge cost of keeping young offenders locked up.

Hopes were raised early last year that the Government would come up with cash to meet the bill for secure accommodation.

Council chiefs have budgeted to spend £150,000 this year on the cost.

But a couple of years ago they ended up spending £695,000 on out-of-town placements, which included £274,000 for just three young offenders who were on remand for many months. A delegation of council chiefs came away from a meeting with local government minister David Curry 12 months ago believing they had secured a better cash deal for Bolton.

Cllr Bob Howarth, Bolton Council's Labour leader, said: "We were told that the Home Office would be making a statement and we believed there would be a contribution.

"We may as well have whistled in the wind. This can cost us £2,000 a week and the problem is that it is an open-ended commitment.

"We just don't know how many of these young criminals magistrates will send to secure accommodation." Tory leader Cllr Norman Critchley added: "It was not just a verbal assumption. There is also written confirmation in Hansard that the problem of secure accommodation was being looked at."

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