For a council that claims to have no money, Worst Street will certainly be flashing the cash in the months ahead.

A report to an apparently unscheduled cabinet meeting held between Christmas and the New Year – and missing from its general meeting list – asks that updated capital programme plans to spend more than £3.5 million in the remainder of the 2016-2017 financial year, which ends on 30^th April are noted.

When we came across it, we were reminded of the now commonplace political ploy of burying bad news at a time when no-one is looking – but surely, that couldn’t be the case here.

There are several items that stand out – all involving huge sums of money – and all are projects where spending has not yet begun.

Far and away the largest is £950,000 for “Municipal Buildings alterations”

Have we missed something – or did plans to tart up Worst Street to the tune of almost a million pounds slip us by?

We must have missed it, as according to the report, the table indicates the approved capital programme for the year

Then there is “PRSA Investment” – to the tune of £840,000.

An identical sum was mentioned in January 2015 – to be used to get the PRSA up to scratch so that it could be leased out.

In September of that year a full repair and renew lease for the site was signed with sport, leisure and recreation “experts” 1Life “relieving borough council tax payers of any future financial responsibility.”

1Life was given the go-ahead to arrange repairs and improvements to bring the centre up to an improved handover condition – with the final bill to be paid by the borough council … although we were told that those costs would be covered by savings made by energy efficiency improvements.

All of this was announced in the financial year 2015-2016.

So – have things been carried over because the work has not yet been done, or are we looking at a second, identical, payment?

At the time of the 1Life deal our so-called leader ‘Nipper’ Bedford said: “This points the way to a successful future for the PRSA at minimal cost to the council taxpayer.”

Perhaps a few words of explanation might help make matters clearer.

The third really big item is £440,000 for “East Lindsey DC CCTV” – which Worst Street is going to monitor for our neighbours.

Early reports about this were quite specific that “a total of 97 CCTV cameras are in use in the area and East Lindsey District Council is investing £425,000 to upgrade them all.”

Quite right too, so why does the figure appear on Boston’s spending programme?

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It seems as though Boston Borough council is planning some New-ish Year’s resolutions for 2017 if our reading between the lines (which is the only way to do it with Worst Street) is correct...

We made the discovery when we were asked about Worst Street’s new management structure – and realised that we knew little if anything about it.

If readers with long memories cast their minds back a year they will recall the council’s fruitless search for a Head of Service: Economic Development and Growth – “a high profile appointment … (with) responsibility for providing strategic, visionary and organisational leadership in all aspects of inward investment, growth and wider regeneration and economic development for the Borough.”

Not just a high profile job either – a highly-paid one at £65,000.

This being Worst Street, the advert was placed at exactly the wrong time to generate a good response – between Christmas 2015 and the 2016 New Year – and it was not until the summer that the post was re-advertised – this time at a downgraded salary of £45k for the job of “leading” on economic development.

Then all was silence – aside from the sound of cash registers ringing in the office of the recruitment firm Veredus which charged Worst Street’s taxpayers more than £16,000 for advertising and its time involved in getting nowhere slowly.

Now, though, we note that the management cauldron has been given a big stir – with a host of unannounced changes which took effect at the start of October last year.

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IN comes an Economic Development Manager reporting directly to Chief Executive Phil Drury – just as it said in the original advert.

Clive Gibbon comes to Boston via Fenland District Council where he worked between 2006 and 2014, leaving to run his own consultancy firm between his Fenland departure and Boston arrival in September last year.

IN comes Phil Perry as Head of Service, town centre, leisure, events and culture – appointed in July last year from a similar role in South Holland.

The new line up is more streamlined, and sees some changes of title for other staff  – plus the disappearance of one of the borough’s longest serving and most senior managers, Steve Lumb … who retired in October last year after 18 years in Worst Street.

Hopefully, these changes are being made with some sort of aim to pull Boston up by its bootstraps – or at least by its shoelaces.

Certainly, there enough people are being paid to do it.

But as is so often the case with Boston Borough Council – whilst we taxpayers foot the bill we are not deemed worth telling what is going on – and major changes like these should have been announced.

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That’s it from us for now – we’re off to the sun-kissed beaches of Norfolk for a spell and will be back around mid-January.

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