DARWEN Town Council is to spend more than £2,000 educating schoolchildren about the importance of Darwen Tower.

At the council’s meeting this week, Sunnyhurst councillor Pete Hollings said cash that had been ringfenced for the Friends of Darwen Tower should be re-directed to the project.

The proposal was that officers from Blackburn with Darwen Council would talk to children in schools about the structure’s iconic status in the hope that it would make it less prone to vandalism in the future.

The council will also write to the Friends of Darwen Tower, which Coun Hollings said had been too inactive despite having access to almost £5,000.

The group has been pledged £4,000 from the town council which was still held by the authority, Coun Hollings explained, and had also received £883 from elsewhere.

He said: “Could I put a motion in place that we write to them and ask them what their plans are for the future?

“I think it is a shame that this money has been sat there idle.

“I would like to put a plan together to get into the schools to educate children about the iconic status of the tower and they would hopefully then not vandalise it in future.

“We can get somebody to do a talk and start a programme.”

Councillors agreed that an initial £2,000, given to them by the now defunct neighbourhood board two years ago and intended for the friends group, could be used to get things in motion for the assemblies to start next year.

Coun Hollings also responded to a letter from Darwen MP Jake Berry calling for the cash to be used to install CCTV at the tower.

He said: “I have been on to our engineers and it is technically do-able but it would be very visible and would most likely require listed building consent.

“The initial reaction to the proposal is that it is not feasible.”