Gorilla goes ape in Holbeach

A gorilla was trying not to be missed in Holbeach High Street on Tuesday (October 31).

It was in fact local resident Paul Poll in costume in an attempt to raise awareness of his complaint about money spent on repairs to the Cemetery Chapels in the town.
He stood near Market Junction in the rain for two hours from 7.30am with a sign saying ‘Justice 4 the chapels’ and ‘Honk’.
He told The Voice afterwards he was concerned as he believed following a Freedom of Information request to Holbeach Parish Council that the authority had not gone with the cheapest contractor when it came to outsourcing the work on the chapels.
Mr Poll said: “I had a really good reception from people.
“Hopefully I’ve raised awareness of the issue.”
Holbeach Parish Council chair Clive Turner, said: “The Cemetery Chapels are an asset of the town and as a listed building the parish council has a duty of care regarding them.
“They are watertight. The interiors aren’t in good condition and monies do need to be spent.
“As a council I believe the general conscious would be to restore them to their former glory, this would cost thousands and would only be achievable with various grants.
“The chapels have been re-roofed and we continue to discuss replacing the windows, again external funding would be required as part of a wider grant process.
“But we are in a position of a lack of ongoing yearly investment to which we now need to play catch up.
“Investment in the chapels needs to be balanced with other areas of need, and they remains high on the committees priority list. If the protester would like to document the concerns and present them to the council I’m sure we can better investigate the background to this and explain the challenges and how we can approach funding to begin to restore them.
“Secondly the Parish Council for various councillor(s) personal reasons has not been able to meet. Unavoidable and this has impacted the progress of a number of items however we will meet this Thursday.
“We do suffer from a lack of councillors, whilst we’ve got on and delivered some good stuff since May more needs to be done to prove we can operate effectively, behave professionally and act and communicate as a team.
“I’d hope that once we can convince people of this we may attract parishoners who’d be willing to devote time to improving the community areas for which we are responsible.”