Articles
Carlton awarded up to £20 million from Long-Term Plan for Towns fund
Date Posted: 4:12 PM on Thu, 7 March 2024
Gedling Borough Council has been awarded funding for Carlton following an announcement by government in the spring budget.
The Department for Levelling Up & Communities has written to the council to inform them that they are one of 55 towns to receive funding as part of the Long Term Plan for Towns announced in yesterday’s spring budget. The council could get up to £20 million over a 10-year period to use on community projects to regenerate the area and reduce ant-social behaviour.
The letter from the Minister for Levelling Up stated that the council will receive ‘endowment-style' funding to give them the certainty to deliver projects over the 10-year lifespan of the programme and flexibility to invest in interventions based on local needs and priorities.
In order to receive the funding, a Town Board needs to be created and long-term plan produced. The board needs to be made up with members of the community, local businesses, Councillors and the local Member of Parliament. An Independent Chair must be appointed to the group and a key element of the programme is engagement with the community to ensure their voices are heard when it comes to where the funding will be invested.
Deputy Leader of Gedling Borough Council, Councillor Michael Payne said
“We welcome this long-overdue news that the government has listened to our repeated calls for Gedling Borough’s fair share of funding and finally announced that we will receive this much needed funding. We have been calling on the government for several years to give us our fair share of funding, following several years of being overlooked by government ministers for Levelling Up & Towns Funding. Now, in the last few months of this Parliament, we have been told we are going to get around £2 million per year, subject to the creation of a Town Board and an approved investment plan.
The residents of Carlton will be pleased to hear that money is going to be spent in the area, the council has already invested in improving the shopping precinct and have been working tirelessly with the precinct owners to get big businesses back into the centre. We will continue this work with the local residents and businesses to make sure that Carlton gets every penny it deserves.
The begging-bowl culture created by this government when it comes to allocating funding to local towns, means that this funding has come years later than it should have done and many years later than many other towns across the country.”