Historical Factoids 25:

[Mal]

Historical Factoids 25: Borderlands.

Seems from what I’ve heard and seen quite a few people aren’t aware of this initiative.

The Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal was signed in March 2021 bringing up to £452 million of fresh investment to the Borderlands area. This funding was made up of £350M from Government and £100M from local match funding. Around £200M for the English side.

The Accountable Bodies are Dumfries and Galloway Council with regards to both the Scottish Government funding for the Growth Deal and that part of the UK Government funding which relates to Growth Deal Projects physically located in Scotland. Northumberland County Council has the role of accountable body as regards that part of the UK Government funding which relates to Growth Deal.

As soon as I was aware I asked for a meeting with the lead officer at NCC for this fund. I did manage to convince her that Bedlington should be included and that we had a range of needs which could be addressed as part of this deal. She agreed and not only were we included but we should have been one of the first to benefit.

https://www.youtube.com/live/Q4zZGP1LXjI...

We are in the Place Programme which is a £50m initiative focusing on smaller market and coastal towns across the region. Our allocation is around £3M and we hear this mentioned time and time again by the political gentry (along with the Cycle track and train station) when they explain just how well Bedlington is doing in terms of funding!

The Place Programme includes Alnwick, Bedlington, Bellingham, Dalton in Furness, Egremont, Eyemouth, Galashiels, Gretna, Haltwhistle, Hawick, Jedburgh, Kirkconnel & Kelloholm, Longtown, Newbiggin, Penrith, Prudhoe, Rothbury, Stranraer, Ulverston, Whithorn, Wigton and Wigtown.

Fair enough it wasn’t a lot but better than the usual zero investments!

How it ran out is something which I think should be used to demonstrate how not to do this sort of stuff!!!!!!!

A local Board was formed to bring forward ideas for inclusion and in the first full year of meetings it achieved an introductory paragraph of about a dozen lines for our Place Programme. I think that could have been done in about 12 minutes not 12 months!

A call for projects was made public and most of us sitting on this local Board put our own ideas in. About 35 projects were suggested and a year later at a meeting with the Leader of NCC, the Deputy Leader and head of regeneration at NCC I was told none had been forthcoming? My response was that I knew 35 had been submitted and I knew for definite 6 had been submitted because I had submitted them! Seems I was wrong? Pressing further about this and I was told there may have been half a dozen submitted. Nope still not accepting that and the total went up to 21? I knew other people who had submitted projects and again “Nope”! Finally yes 36 projects had been submitted but with no business plans. I said we didn’t ask for business plans we went out with a ‘Call for projects’ and anyway who on earth was going to write or pay to get written business plans before they knew if their projects had any legs?

We are now more than half way through this initiative and what’s been delivered……….err nowt as yet!

Plenty of meetings, plenty of excuses, plenty of waffle but not one spade in the ground.

At one point I suggested putting it all into Keith Fitzsimons project for the Town Centre because that would give us a USP and get people into the Town centre. Can’t really understand why he wasn’t taken more seriously but then again this is Bedlington we are talking about.

We now see extra funding being allocated, as was supposed to happen originally, which frees up the strict criteria governing the fund and means other projects which don’t actually strictly qualify for this fund can now be considered.

So we now have the proposed café/restaurant on the platform at the station, upgrading the roads, pavements and streets and my pet sports project at West Lea in the mix.

We have seen people walk away from this Board because they just lost the will to live, people changed within the membership and some people trying like hell to get it to work.

5 Years and counting………………………..