£22m plan is backed again
Flats and market-square proposal in town centre is set to progress
Scarborough Council’s plans to borrow £22million to turn a disused building in Scarborough town centre into 200 flats for students and NHS staff has been backed once more.
The authority’s Cabinet took the decision to proceed with the regeneration scheme in June but that move was then the subject of two separate call-ins by councillors.
Five Conservative councillors and five independent signed call-ins, which asked the council to look again at the decision in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The authority plans to replace the former Argos building in Newborough with a scheme drawn up in collaboration with Coventry University Scarborough and the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs services at Scarborough Hospital.
As part of the plans, the council is also looking to creating a “market square” which could include demolishing some buildings at St Helen’s Square.
The call-ins were debated by the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Board, which could have asked the cabinet to look again at its decision.
By a vote of five to four, with the Conservative chairman of the committee Cllr Guy Coulson casting the decisive vote, the councillors backed the cabinet’s decision meaning the scheme will now progress.
Cluster of Independent Members (CIM) leader Cllr Bill Chatt, who led one of the call-ins, earlier told the meeting that the decision on what he dubbed “Siddons Towers” after the leader of the council Cllr Steve Siddons, should be made by all councillors.
Cllr Chatt said: “Members have to remember this is a 40-year payback and it is putting us in a really difficult position. We don’t know what Covid has meant to this council but we want to go out and borrow £22m.”
He added he would “run away from this scheme.”
Cllr Phil Trumper called the scheme a “pre-Covid project for a post-Covid world.”
The council’s finance director, Nick Edwards, said: “This scheme is predicated on the income you get from it will pay for the cost of buying and borrowing the scheme. So it has a nil effect on the bottom line of our revenue budget.
“So just to be clear, if we are not going ahead with this scheme this is not money and borrowings that you can use to help us out of Covid. The only reason why we can borrow this money is that the scheme pays for itself.”
Jackie Mathers Associate Pro Vice Chancellor at CU Coventry and CU Scarborough, said the university had invested more than £30m in Scarborough and hoped to have more than 1,000 students enrolled in the town in September. She added that CU Scarborough was “absolutely committed” to the project.