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A blaze in one of Blackpool’s major attractions was averted by the sprinkler system, a fire service spokesman said. The fire broke out at a florist’s shop in the Coral Island leisure complex on the Promenade in the early hours.

The Trades Union Congress has hit back at the speed and scope of the government public spending cuts.

West Lancashire District Council have approved a complete ban on smoking outside council premises. Now that other councils are adopting this policy, Simon Clark, from Smokers’ lobby group Forest, said everyone was entitled to a break during work.

Hospital fire checks in Greater Manchester are being urged before staff dial 999 in a bid by the emergency service to reduce costs, and because the vast majority of alarm calls were false.

Doomed regeneration organisation the North West Regional Development Agency (RDA) has ploughed £4 billion in the region over the past decade. It is being shut down due to coalition public-spending cuts. The figures are included in a report to the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA).

As well as seeking to trim the public sector, the Tory/Lib administration is also taking a substantial axe to the Regional Development Agencies. These were created in 1999 in the eight English regions – including the north west – to drive business growth and economic development.

There will be a distinctly thinner blue line following police cutbacks, as an 18 month freeze on new recruits has been introduced to anticipate cuts in public-sector funding. It means prospective officers who had recently been accepted into the Devon and Cornwall force have had their application forms shredded. A police spokesman added: "The cuts will have an effect on staffing levels.

Greater Manchester has the third worst record for crime nationally year-on-year. Forces across England and Wales recorded an average reduction in crime of 8% last year, said the most well-regarded source of stats, the British Crime Survey. Their report said that Greater Manchester had around 100 crimes per 1,000 people in the last 12 months, which is the third highest in England and Wales after the Metropolitan Police and Nottinghamshire.

More than 4,500 NHS staff across the Merseyside area will face the axe when all primary care trusts (PCTs) will be abolished when £70bn of work “commissioning” care is transferred to groups of family doctors from 2013. There are more than 4,500 managers and administrators employed by PCTs across Merseyside, North Cheshire and Central Lancashire.

The ongoing row over cuts to school construction programmes erupted in the House of Commons with demands that Education Secretary Michael Gove faces up to Merseyside fury over his cancellation of 26 school rebuilds. He was urged by MP Stephen Twigg to come to Liverpool and see for himself the impact of his cuts.

Not all sick leave is the result of genuine illness, a new survey says. In fact 20 per cent of staff ‘takes sickies’. The poll for Aon Consulting claimed thousands of workers took ‘sickies’ to look after family and friends. The group polled 7,500 workers across Europe, including 1,005 in the UK. In an earlier survey conducted by the CBI and insurers AXA, the highest levels of absence were found in the north-west, which lost 8.8 days an employee per year.

The city of Liverpool’s electoral services department was a runner-up in the council’s Be Proud Awards, held at St George’s Hall. This has been questioned because the department was responsible for the mix-up when hundreds of people were unable to cast their votes in the recent general election. Liberal Democrat Colin Eldridge, who was defeated in the election, said the news would be met with “anger and amusement”.