Coun. Sherras and his colleagues took this decision having received the advice of the Secretary of State for the Environment and the experts of English Heritage that the building they wanted to "preserve" had been inspected in detail and found to be of no significant architectural or historical interest worthy of protection. As a matter of fact, the professional planning officers of our borough council had given precisely the same advice.

So the likeliest outcome is that the NHS will appeal against the planning committee's perverse decision and, a year or two and a lot of money down the line, will get its planning permission and we will get the much-needed new homes at Chatburn Road.

In the meantime, the people of Clitheroe will suffer in three ways. Our Primary Care Trust will have been deprived of a considerable sum of money which it would have applied to the relief of pain and suffering. The sick and vulnerable will simply have to wait for a Planning Inspector to correct the planning committee's error.

The second consequence is that local households, who were to have been provided with "affordable" homes on the site, will have had to move out of their native district and away from their wider families to get a roof over their heads.

And the third consequence is that dozens of Clitheronians in the construction industry, who are currently idle because of the credit crunch, will remain idle and will pass this Christmas and the Christmas after next in shortage, instead of plenty.

On the other hand, Coun. Sherras and his colleagues will have drawn their expenses and allowances as members of the borough council and received the plaudits of those "conservationists" who apparently prefer the preservation of an ugly and inconsequential set of old buildings to the healing of the sick, housing of the poor and provision of jobs to the unemployed.

No doubt they will feel proud of themselves.

Today is polling day in Lancashire County Council elections and it is expected, on all sides, that control will pass from the Labour Party to the Conservatives.

If we, in Clitheroe, elect a Conservative county councillor, which I still hope we will, we can expect the county to start spending money in Clitheroe on new schools, old people's day centres and other, much-needed facilities.

It is for that reason I will be voting Conservative.

That, however, can only be the first step. We will also need to encourage our borough councillors to start working for the prosperity of our town or, if they cannot bring themselves to that extremity, at least to stand out of the way of their officials, and allow them to do it.