Last updated 05:18, Friday, 21 November 2008

A WEEK is a long time in economic crisis. When decisions on government rescue deals for two crucial Cumbrian developments are promised next week, the best anyone can do is keep fingers crossed and hopes high.

But assurances that the Government is ready to step in to bail out two critical building projects stalled by credit crunch, do at this stage give cause for some optimism.

Cash injections to revive the Carlisle Northern Development Route, the city’s western bypass, and the Penrith New Squares shopping and housing scheme, will give welcome relief from anxieties over the severest impact of a recession looking firmly set to do its worst.

The chief executive of the Northwest Regional Development Agency has said talks on a deal for New Squares are advanced and a decision will be taken next Friday.

Possible rescue for the western bypass is further off and could be dependent on the content of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report next Monday. But it has been widely speculated that spending on big building projects will be key to the Government’s rescue plan for the economy.

Even before financial crisis hit with such breathtaking rapidity, Cumbria’s economy couldn’t have been said to be the country’s healthiest. Its slow, faltering growth was always going to be dependent on the determination of its population and the success of a handful of major projects, themselves reliant on heavy investment, native ingenuity and a willingness to work for local and regional prosperity.

Now, as investments are pulled, jobs are lost and aspirations sorely tested, few regions better qualify for help to keep longer term plans for growth on track.

Public money has been spent in the last few weeks alone for many more seriously dubious purposes than to help a struggling region which would be pulling itself up by its own bootstraps still – had not those straps been cut away without warning.