COUNCIL chiefs are considering adopting a mobile phone text messaging service to alert businesses to the threat of a terrorist attack or emergency on the streets of Bolton.

Officials in the town hall's emergency planning department are recommending that Bolton Council should subscribe to a unique security scheme -- the City Alert Texting System (Cats) -- which enables users to send text messages to individual mobile phone users warning of emergencies such as a terrorist or chemical attack.

Planners in Bolton say the system would also be a powerful tool for alerting the public to more local problems such as flooding or road closures due to accidents.

A Bolton Council spokesman said: "The Cats system is certainly something we will be looking at in the very near future.

"It is a new system which we have not fully evaluated but has a lot of potential."

Bolton Council currently has procedures in place to evacuate the entire shopping centre, but it is looking at ways to break down the town centre into smaller areas so that certain districts such as Churchgate could be cleared without affecting others.

A study into a pager system is also in progress. If introduced it would be similar to a system that has been in place in Manchester since the IRA bomb devastated a third of the city centre in 1996.

In the city, businesses buy a pager which, as well as allowing the user to send and receive personal messages, can accept a signal from a central messaging service operated by the police.

Chief officers can send a message to companies asking them to evacuate their immediate area. The pagers are also used to send essential traffic information and information on crime reduction.

The pager scheme could be shelved, however, in favour of the Cats system.

A Bolton Council spokesman said: "Pagers are essentially old technology so it could well be that we implement a mobile phone based system."

Under the Cats system, mobile users would be able to subscribe for £1.50 a year and receive messages from the service provider, most likely to be the local authority.

Nick Sellar, spokesman for Eazytext, the Worcestershire-based firm which devised the Cats system, said at least 180 local authority emergency planning departments were "very interested" in it.

Brighton has become the first city to sign up. Mr Stellar said: "By signing up, Brighton have shown themselves to be leaders in vision," he said. "They are a forward-thinking authority who believe it is wrong to wait until something happens before signing up."

Brighton and Hove City Council are actively promoting the system locally, encouraging as many people as possible to log on. Mr Sellar said the system could be up and running in the city within a couple of weeks.

Cats, set up in response to the September 11 attacks on America, was launched on February 13 in London.

Steven Norris, a prospective Tory candidate for London Mayor, was the first person in the capital to sign up.