How long will we be paying for this town square revival?
LANCASHIRE County Council has confirmed it is going to spend £ 150,000 helping to improve Rawtenstall’s town square.
It’s the latest plan for the plot of land between Kay Street and Bank Street which, for so long was the Valley shopping centre.
As we know all too well, Labour made it a priority when they came to power in 2011 to rid Rawtenstall town centre of the blighted shopping centre, which by then was all but empty.
To fund that plan, they pulled funding for a new swimming pool in Haslingden, thus essentially funding the purchase and demolition of one eyesore while at the same time condemning a building of historic and civic importance in Haslingden to become one.
Over the years since, we’ve had various ideas for the site proposed, and it formally became known as ‘Spinning Point Phase Two’ - phase one being the much-delayed bus station.
In what now appears to be a very good piece of luck, Rossendale Council came to the conclusion plans for a spa/ flats/ shops/ leisure facilities/ hotel just weren’t right, mere weeks before the Coronavirus pandemic hit and rid the council of any sense of needing the hassle of having to rent out retail space.
The new town square plan looks nice - there’s lots of greenery for example.
And it’s nice to see LCC funding something in Rawtenstall.
But it does pose plenty of questions, all the same.
The LCC funding report claims that their support will enable the ‘ transformation of a neglected piece of landscape’ at the heart of the town and create “an outside meeting point, which is particularly important during Covid.”
The report also notes that, along with a scheme in Barnoldswick, Pendle ( which will use materials from Whitworth Quarry in Rossendale, which is a nice touch) LCC may have to borrow the money to fund its share of the investment, at an annual cost of £ 26k a year.
That’s small beans in the grand scheme of Lancashire County Council’s budget - but it does pose a lot of questions.
Essentially, both Rossendale Council and Lancashire County Council have borrowed money to make the town square plan happen.
We have no idea of the true cost of the scheme, or the amount of money which was spent on the various abandoned plans for the site.
We do know that the funding Rossendale Council secured for phase one (the bus station) was contingent on phase 2 being delivered.
We don’t know if the council has had to give that money back now.
Away from the money questions, perhaps the most alarming sentence in the LCC report is that the Town Square is described as a ‘neglected piece of landscape’.
Given it’s only been there for a few years, Rossendale Council surely needs to answer why this is the case.
The Town Square was only supposed to be temporary, but surely the council should have planned so it didn’t replace an eyesore building with a rundown open space?
The end may finally be in sight for the Spinning Point project.
Will Rawtenstall be better off as a result?
The new bus station is certainly good news - but how long will the taxpayers of Rossendale be paying for a town square which the local council has yet to prove it is capable to maintaining once cash has been splashed on it?