NEW exercise equipment is planned for Burnley’s St Peter’s Centre and a major engineering project is scheduled for the town bus station during the coming year.

Plans were confirmed as Burnley council’s executive backed a freeze for their portion of the council tax bill.

State-of-the-art equipment will be bought for the Church Street centre as part of a £275,000 refurbishment and £135,000 is set to be spent on replacing the departure doors at the bus station.

Burnley is set to receive a ‘freeze grant’ of £165,244 after the executive approved plans to leave the council tax rate for 2012-13 unchanged.

Councillors made the move after being told that only increase above 2.5 per cent would leave the borough with any benefits - the freeze grant would be withdrawn otherwise.

Town hall savings of £669,000 were approved in December and a further £245,000 has been found by rejigging insurance policies, the management restructure programme and slashing phone costs, among other things.

Major projects totalling £4.75million were also ratified by the executive, mainly covering marquee schemes like the Weavers Triangle revamp and the start of the Todmorden Curve initiative.

Other works pencilled in include £1million to overhaul Trafalgar Street, ahead of the university technical college development.

The £343,000 upgrade of the open market has been returned to the schedule - it was removed last year after delays with the nearby Curzon Street shopping centre.

But Coun Margaret Lishman, resources cabinet member, warned that the outlook for 2013-14 was less optimistic.

She said: “We are looking at very limited resources and capital receipts for next year. We might not be able to do what we want to do because of a lack of resources.”

The county council is set to freeze its portion - the largest share - of the council tax bill. But police chiefs have voted for a 2.5 per cent increase.