Council embraces false economics

Blackburn with Darwen Council has applied (to itself) for planning permission to turn the former Lewis Textile Museum into a centre for rehabilitating former drug addicts.

The council closed the museum in 2006 as part of a supposed cost cutting exercise. Its collections are now housed at the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery.

The Lancashire Telegraph reports that the savings made by closing the museum amounted to £23,000, while the conversion to a rehabilitation centre will cost £500,000. This doesn’t seem like cost cutting to us.