County council’s plans for town centres

Lincolnshire County Council is to look at giving £50,000 to its town centres and appointing a person to oversee them.

It’s also aiming to set up a Spalding and Holbeach Local Transport Board, one of eight in the county, a report to its Environment and Economy Scrutiny Committee states.
County councillors could also be given £3,000 to spend on events in towns in their wards, similar to the ward budgets given out to its members by South Holland District Council.
Its portfolio holder for Spalding town centre development Coun Gary Taylor, is also a county councillor on the committee the report will go before next week.
He told The Voice that the county council’s proposals would sit alongside work being carried out by the district council.
“It will support the work the district council is doing in the community.
“It will also allow us to look at best practice within the county and see what works where.”
The county council hopes to scope the funding for the town centres of ‘up to £50,000 starting in April’, the documents state while drawing up action plans for town centre.
It says of the ‘Single Point of Contact’ proposal that the person would draw up an action plan for the town it’s responsible for and would bring groups in the town together as well as having regular meetings with other people in the same roles in other towns in the county.
“It is seen as an effective solution to provide co-ordination and good customer/stakeholder management, providing effective communications,” the report continues. “The SPOC however cannot just be a reactive role responding to external queries and should be tasked with co-ordinating responses to known issues (as raised by the Scrutiny Panel) and immerging intelligence.
“This in turn will need to be reviewed to help inform services going forward including opportunities to be effective in supporting town centres.”
Buy local campaigns are also proposed.
On the local transport boards, including one for Spalding and Holbeach, the report says it would ‘address immediate town centre/high street issues and options for LTBs to develop and plan longer term interventions targeted at the specific needs of each place and where any shared themes are identified, to develop an appropriate costed programme of activities to promote growth’.
It says it will also look to lobby government so that local authorities have more say on where 5G masts are placed and ‘to lobby those organisations that restrict businesses and support further streamlining of administrative processes for town centre businesses, including licensing’.