The top item on the agenda of Wednesday’s meeting of the Boston  Town Area Committee is headed “Boston Big Local – a  discussion with the Big Lottery Fund’s “Big Local Rep" for Boston Central.”

Regular readers will recall that this is all about money – a million pounds worth of it to be precise – granted to Boston by something called Big Local … which is to do with the National Lottery.

The money is to be spent in the six most deprived wards in Boston – Staniland South, Pilgrim Ward, Skirbeck Ward, Boston Central, a small portion of Fenside and Witham Ward.
And, as everyone has been at pains to stress, the way this money is spent will be entirely community led and controlled, without any interference from those powers that be that usually crawl out of the woodwork when any free cash is on offer.
At the time the announcement of this largesse was made at the end of last year, Mandy Exley, the South Lincolnshire Community Voluntary Service Community Development Officer – yes, the SLCVS again – told us: “There’s no government arm in Boston involved in any of this. It is totally community led … We’re all going to be working together to help the residents work very, very closely with the lottery so the residents are equipped to manage this funding. There will be extensive community consultation done right across Boston, so everybody will have a say.”
She was also at pains to stress: “This money will not be dictated by Boston Borough Council; it will not be dictated by our organisation, the SLCVS.  It will be totally dictated by the local community ... it is their say where this money is spent”
Such unambiguous statements caused us to raise an eyebrow, when – not long after – BTAC was given a special audience with the Lincoln-based official who is overseeing the Boston scheme … to “help with community consultation and planning.”
Since then, there have apparently been a series of public meetings  – though we have heard nothing of what went on.
What we have heard, though is a bleat from the Labour group on Boston Borough that some central wards have been left off the list, and who want to know who’s had what from the National Lottery fund over the years.
“We still don’t believe that we should go any further forward on allocating the Big Local boundaries and the wards which will benefit, until we have had a proper discussion about this information. Based on this discussion we would hope to see a local decision about what the catchment area of the Big Local will be … “
Somewhat contradictorily, whilst Labour agrees that it should only be residents of the wards involved and not any elected members who decide how the money should be spent – “we recognise the need for support from all of the key bodies from local government, health, police, housing, the voluntary sector and any other bodies that operate within these wards.”
We couldn’t agree more with the first half of this call, as that it what has been promised.
But we also think that just because for the sake of brevity the grant area was referred to as “central” Boston, this should not be taken to include wards other than those specified.
Now BTAC’s finger is back in the pie with Wednesday’s discussion.
At this rate, we fear that that it will not be long before a cosy little clique of all the usual suspects will assemble itself whose idea of giving “support” to the hapless public is to get money spent on their pet projects.
We’ve already seen how schemes such as Placecheck led to a series of homogenous projects that used external financing to pay for services such as street cleaning and maintenance that was the work of Boston Borough Council.
Now, it seems that by superimposing itself on the Big Local project, BTAC is hoping to spend the money on a wider area than that specified – and perhaps ultimately on projects agreed within the cabinet rather than those wanted by local people.
If a member of one of the wards named in the Big Local project would like money spending on a particular project he or she should have to make a case to the “people’s committee” set up to run the show – assuming it ever gets to that.
At the moment, despite all the promises of this scheme being run by the public for the public, the efforts of our  local politicians of all parties seem to be directed at  grabbing as much of the money as they can.

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