Bid to improve Grantham town centre could attract £20 million of investment

"Grantham has a tremendous potential given the strength of its infrastructure and strategic connections to the UK's major cities. It has a great history and architectural heritage."

Coun Dobson said a major part of the improvements would be the development of land near the railway station which he said was a "woefully underexploited asset". He added improvements would be made "by improving our squares and spaces so that they are more attractive to visitors and through converting the spaces above shops into new homes or offices."

The meeting was told that the final bid will be for £8.1 million. Coun Dobson said: "We have every confidence that this final bid, although still part of a competitive process, will attract the essential funding Grantham needs and deserves."

As part of the bid, the council was asked to agree to contribute a budget of £379,092 to cover four years of the project which will support a local 'town team' and manager.

Council leader Kelham Cooke said that if the bid was successful the council would receive about £8m from the government , with the potential to attract more than £11 million in match funding from the private sector. Coun Cooke said: "Grantham has so much potential and that potential, if realised, will benefit generations within the town out to the remotest district borders and across Lincolnshire as the first town of the county."

Councillor Phil Dilkes said there was no timely scrutiny of the draft business case or of the feedback from government. He said: "Will the leader or his deputy now give a commitment that rather than pay lip service to scrutiny, that this council will in future embrace real pre-scrutiny that is meaningful and robust especially on major multi-million pound projects such as this?"

Coun Dilkes said he was concerned about plans for the Grantham town team and asked who is going to make up the team and how will they be chosen? He said: "Am I the only one who thinks there is a danger of this being seen as a back door attempt to create a hand-picked Grantham Town Council by another name but lacking in credibility by avoiding the democratic accountability of elections?"

Grantham councillor Charmaine Morgan shared his concern with the proposed Grantham town team. She said: "We have in the past made it clear that we would be looking to set up a town council and so how that would tie in with that is a matter for concern and due consideration particularly in view of the fact that we now understand there could be an overall review of the structure of our local authorities. How would this sit within that?"

Ian Stokes said the bid had come 10 years too late. He said: "We went through all this early in the 2010s and we couldn't get it through then because we were stuck with various properties such as the four Victorian buildings near the station which have a Grade 2 listing on them. We would have liked to have had a wonderful area there which was goig to have IT offices and it would have been a wonderful way to get into the centre of town. This bid looks to be a lot better and I hope it will progress the town centre."

Councillor Mark Whittington said: "For somebody who has lived for the majority of my 57 years in Grantham I have watched with increasing alarm in recent decades as Grantham town centre has declined with an increasing number of vacant shops, and shops being taken up by pound stores and the like. So I fully welcome this bid. I think it is long overdue that we have some investment to improve Grantham town centre."

The council voted unanimously in favour of contributing a budget of £379,000 to the project if the bid is successful and to putting forward the bid to government by the end of July.