The decision to drop the Ashton Park plan means the money saved can now be diverted into the city’s other Levelling Up Fund schemes
Around £5m would have had to be cut from the costs of Preston ’s Levelling Up Fund projects had one of them – a controversial revamp of Ashton Park – not been scrapped in its entirety, the Local Democracy Reporting Service understands. The salami-slice savings could have affected the majority of the seven schemes for which Preston City Council received £20m in January last year from a cash pot created by the previous government.
However, it is thought that the latter would have been protected from any cost-cutting requirement, as work on it is already underway. The LDRS understands that an eighth project that featured in Preston’s bid – the creation of an “active travel hub” at Preston railway station – had already been dropped after failing to attract the necessary support of Lancashire County Council in its capacity as the transport authority.
“It has gone from bad to farce and back again. Although, to give Labour credit, they have now united all sides of this debate – everyone is annoyed at them. He also questioned whether the city would now “lose out” on housing developer cash – totalling £600,000 – which had been earmarked as a contribution to the original Ashton Park scheme, but is now subject to legal advice in order to determine its eligibility for use on any alternative proposal for the plot. Conservative group leader Stephen Thompson expressed similar sentiment about feared waste – and warned of the need to guard “taxpayers’ cash”.
However, the city council’s Labour cabinet member for resources, Martyn Rawlinson, said the problems stemmed from Levelling Up schemes having a “fixed” budget and specification “at a time when project costs across all areas were rising”.
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