Blackpool Still Strong in Super Casino Race

Blackpool officials still believe that they hold the ace in the race to the hosting Britain's first super casino despite the town ranking third in the list that the Casino Advisory Panel recently came out with.

They believe that if the bid will be hinging on regeneration, the seaside resort is still clearly the winner.

Blackpool came out third in the panel's ranking, behind the frontrunner Greenwich and second placer Glasgow.

The list was the first in a series of more tests that the panel will be conducting before it comes up with a recommendation to the government at the end of the year.

While Blackpool may have ranked at third place in the overall scoring, in the key category of "need for regeneration", it was the only one to get a high score of 9 out of 10. The government has made a specific stress on the importance of this category from the introduction of the super casino concept.

The locations were judged in eight criteria: Social impact, need for regeneration, willingness to license, probability of implementation, regional context, community benefits, unique characteristics and range of areas fro development.

"The importance of the different categories has not been weighted, but we believe if they had been Blackpool would not have been in third place, but would have been higher," Alan Cavill, Blackpool's head of corporate policy and development, said.

"When the Government announced the legislation, it said the primary considerations would be safety and the need for regeneration."