Uppingham Town Council told its ‘Uppingham Explore’ event was a £20,000 flop

A series of events to showcase a town has been criticised after low visitor numbers, with some coaches not even bringing a single passenger.

Uppingham Town Council allocated £20,000 of government grant funding to the Uppingham Explore event which ran on four Fridays throughout February and March.

The plan had been to showcase the town’s shopping offer, history and architecture, but not many people took part.

Originally the town council had planned an Uppingham Expo, but after failing to recruit anyone to organise the event, changed it to Uppingham Explore - inviting people from neighbouring places to visit the market town.

Resident Pat Dalby, who is a former town councillor, submitted a freedom of information request to the council about the cost of the event and at the annual town meeting, held on April 30, she shared her findings.

The council spent £7,563 on coaches, which travelled from neighbouring towns of Oakham, Stamford, Melton Mowbray and Market Harborough, and £4,863 on merchandise. Just over £2,500 was spent on advertising the event.

At the meeting Pat Dalby said: “Uppingham Explore appears to have been an incompetent misuse of £20,000 of levelling up programme. The spend should have been in accordance with value-for-money principles. Instead it has failed to boost community cohesion, increase life chances or boost economic growth in Uppingham.

“You advertised Uppingham as ‘known for its rich history’. There is much more history in the town than just the school. But you disregarded the one group with an abundance of research and knowledge, who could have offered a talk or information for visitors, the Uppingham History Society, who have for the past two years been doing a project on the history of the town shops. What a wasted opportunity by you.”

She also said the local traders had not appeared to benefit and criticised the authority for not evaluating the event. Her freedom of information request revealed visitor numbers were not monitored. She witnessed some coaches turning up without anyone on board.

As part of the tourism event, the town council had made an agreement with Uppingham School and 81 people went along to a talk given by the public school. Just over 180 tote bags were also handed out during the course of the events.

Mayor of Uppingham David Ainslie said the visitor numbers were not as high as they would have liked.

He said: “In light of the understandable criticism of the attempt to boost the trade in the town, that money did not come out of your precept. That came from central government. I know we are all taxpayers but it did not come out of your precept."

Resident Mike Fish said he would like an investigation into ‘what went wrong’ and the chairman said a review would take place.

At the annual meeting, the Stilton Cheese Run, a classic car event which starts at Uppingham market square, was widely praised.