Our
ever-generous government is sending more money Boston’s way – but a question to
be asked is whether we will be able to lay our hands on it.
***
A letter
to Worst Street offers a grant of £750,000 now to fund capital projects
that can be delivered this financial year.
Similar
funding has also been awarded to Skegness, which has been given £750,000, and
Mablethorpe with £500,000.
***
Funding is
being allocated according to population size from the 2011 Census – in this
case representing 64,600 people – and works out at £11.60 per head.
As is so
often the case, Boston is being gypped from the start as the latest available
population figures for 2018 credit us with 69,366 people – worth another
£55,000.
***
The
drawback is the condition attached to the pay-out. The grant must be used to
support capital spend within the Towns Fund guidance.
This fund
offers local authorities up to £25 million to develop long-term economic and
productivity growth “through investment in connectivity, land use, economic
assets including cultural assets, skills and enterprise infrastructure.”
***
The
government letter says: “We are particularly encouraging projects that will
support towns in responding to immediate challenges, including improvement
to or new parks and green spaces and sustainable transport links, improvements
to town centres including repurposing empty commercial properties, demolition
or site remediation where this will have an immediate benefit.”
***
To unlock
the cash the council needs to confirm that this spending is in line with the towns
fund framework, will achieve good value for money and the project can be
delivered this financial year.
Proposals
will be reviewed and the money forked over once it meets the requirements.
***
The letter
adds: “When your town submits their town investment plan in their agreed
cohort, we will ask you to confirm how you are building on this initial
investment.”
***
Our bid
for up to £25 million is in the hands of a 26-strong committee of the great and
the good known as the Boston Town Deal Board.
As far as
we can tell, they last met at the end of January – and there are no clues as to
whether they have kept in touch during the pandemic … although this is possible
virtually.
The group
has a blog – which last featured an entry on 20th March, and a Facebook
page where the last entry was posted on Thursday 26th March with an “update” that said: “The Town Deal
Board meeting due on Friday has been postponed and the team are busy planning
how to support our local businesses for when they emerge from this lockdown.”
***
Will this
mean a struggle to come up with something by way of seed corn to find a solid,
approvable idea where the money can be spent by the end of March?
Even the
board admits on its webpage that “Boston has a very short period to put
together an effective and ambitious Town Board and develop a vision and Town
Investment Plan to potentially access up to £25m.”
***
Who knows?
***
At
present, the government timeline to get plans underway remains unchanged since
the scheme was announced at the end of last year.
***
Boston has
lost out so often before, that we hope that someone, somewhere, will be burning the
midnight oil to try to cobble something together.
Individuals
have submitted scores of ideas in response to a call for their thoughts – but many
are outside the criteria to qualify, which only adds to the pressure to come up
with something quickly
***
East Lindsey,
meanwhile, tells us that its “local Connected Coast (Towns Fund) Board are in
the process of finalising investment plans for each town in a bid to
secure millions of pounds worth of funding.”
Let’s hope
that being a branch office of Manby soon begins to bear fruit.
***
Do you
want the good news or the bad news?
Well, the
good news is that Worst Street tells us that the purple bin trial has been a
huge success, with 132.5 tonnes of paper and card collected between September
2019 and May 2020.
The scheme
was trialled in Boston town, Fenside and Wyberton, and the company that
processes the contents of the purple bins reports that the quality has been
over 98%.
***
The bad
news …?
It looks
as though tht will mean we’re all going to be lumbered with yet another bin – and for some
people, there simply won’t be room to store them.
***
And Worst
Street of course shares only the good news.
We’re sure
that many of you – like us – recall the scores of complaints about the nit-picking
that went on when the trials began and bins went unemptied due to the myriad
rules about what did or didn’t qualify for collection.
***
Yes, the people
involved in the trial have got the idea now – but that still leaves thousands
of us with more agony to come if the purple bin scheme goes boroughwide.
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com
E– mails will be treated in confidence
and published anonymously if requested.
Our former blog is archived at:
http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com
We are on Twitter – visit
@eye_boston
No comments:
Post a Comment