Approval to spend funding for Scarborough and Whitby and apply for more

Scarborough Borough Council's cabinet made the decision last week

Author: Local Democracy Reporter, Anttoni James NumminenPublished 4th Jul 2022

Scarborough Council’s Cabinet has approved the spending of £37m it received as part of the Towns Fund scheme last year, as well as applying for a further £20m from the Levelling Up Fund.

Both the Towns Fund and the Levelling Up Fund are UK-wide Government programmes that aim to invest in towns and infrastructure, respectively.

Speaking at the Cabinet meeting on Friday 1st July, Council Leader, Cllr Steve Siddons said: “One of the things I wanted to say was the fact that Scarborough and Whitby have in the first place won this award of millions of pounds.

“Council officers have worked incredibly hard to put together proposals in the last few days that have reached approval and we’ve been given the funding. We’ll now be moving on to the next steps of delivering the projects which are set out there and are gonna make a significant difference to the area, the residents, and visitors.”

Towns Fund

The cabinet approved the use of the funding which will see Scarborough Council receive £20.2m and Whitby Town Council £17.1m, following a successful bid to the Government scheme last year.

The Towns Fund is a £3.6 billion Government fund for investing in towns as part of a plan to “level up” regions across the UK.

Now that the funding has been approved, Scarborough Council and the Town Deal Board will work with partners to ensure the funding is appropriately spent to “increase employment and skills, create connections, promote culture and the arts and enhance the natural and built environment”.

The projects in Scarborough which are set to receive funding from the Towns Fund are Station Gateway, Fab Lab, Green Construction Skills Village, Scarborough Cricket Club, Scarborough Fair, Scarborough Harbour West Pier, Local Cycling and Walking, and the Scarborough Wild Eye.

The projects in Whitby which are set to receive funding are Broomfields, Eastside Wellbeing, Harbourside Public Realm and Swingbridge, The Old Town Hall, Whitby Maritime Training Hub, and Whitby Wayfinding.

For both towns, funding will also be spent on overall project management.

However, a number of projects are reliant on additional sources of funding. This means that the Scarborough projects are estimated to cost £33m while the cost of the Whitby Town projects is estimated to reach £28m.

This was passed unanimously by the cabinet.

Levelling Up Fund

At the same meeting, Scarborough Council’s Cabinet also approved an application for a further £20m of funding from the Government’s Levelling Up Fund which is also a UK-wide programme “designed to invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life”.

As Scarborough is classed as a “priority one area” it is eligible to apply for up to £20m.

If the application is approved, it would allow Scarborough Council to progress the delivery of its Station Gateway and Fablab+ initiatives.

This would allow £12.4m of funding to go towards the redevelopment of Pavilion House as a public sector hub and £3.8m towards the redevelopment of the former Comet corner building, both of which were purchased by the council last October.

Speaking at the cabinet meeting on Friday 1 July, Council Leader, Cllr Steve Siddons, said the Station Gateway project was “a significant investment in the town and it could be 60, 70, 80 million pounds by the time it’s finished.”

He added that “the money we’ve got is taking us a long way to that, but we do need more, and it’s important that the proposals we’re being asked to approve today are not taking risks with the public purse.”

The cabinet also approved an “in principle” loan of £13.8m as it was required in support of the Levelling Up Funding application.

However, North Yorkshire County Council is also submitting a seperate bid to the Levelling Up Fund to support the transport element of the project.

The council intends that further contributions not covered by the grant “would be funded from commercial rental returns generated from those buildings” as well as “cross-subsidies from other commercial phases within the Station Gateway development”.

Chief executive of Scarborough Council, Mike Greene, praised the work of council officers on both the Towns Fund and Levelling Up Fund applications, adding that “for a council of our size to get one of the biggest allocations of Town Deal funding in the country and having this ambitious bid… is a remarkable achievement and goes to show what we can do if we work in partnership.”

The cabinet agreed unanimously to pass the proposal.

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