Corby's levelling-up projects have 'no vision', say furious councillors, amid call for answers

Members of Corby Town Council launched an astonishing condemnation of the way that more than £19m is to be spent in the town.

At a Corby Cube meeting last week, one councillor said that ‘nobody wanted’ the schemes designed to improve the town centre, and another said they’re ‘not right for Corby’.

The money for the projects is coming from the Government’s Towns Fund as part of its levelling-up agenda and will be spent on: a cycle lane between the station and the town centre; a sixth form college in Chisholm House; traffic and air quality sensors installed around the town; and a new community centre inside Grosvenor House.

But all the projects have faced an uphill struggle to get off the ground, partly because the original bid for £25m was not fully-met by the government. Only the sixth form centre – which has been scaled-back since it was originally proposed – is under way.

The projects have been the subject of fierce criticism locally, with some people angry at the way in which the money is being spent.

A board of unelected business, civic and community representatives, along with councillors and the town’s MP, was set up three years ago to bid for up to £25m for capital projects to help level-up Corby. In mid-2021, it was announced that it would be awarded £19.1m.

The board has never met in public and, although minutes are published after the meetings, none have been placed on the board’s website since August last year.

The board’s lead authority is North Northamptonshire Council which is responsible for the administration and submission of funding bids.

Corby Town Council’s representative on the Towns Fund board for the past 14 months has been council leader Cllr Mark Pengelly who detailed his frustrations with the scheme at the council’s meeting last Tuesday (January 17) . He said that he felt other sites should have been prioritised.

“We have got the old TA Centre, the old court building, but we’re building a ten or eleven million pound cycle route in that nobody wants,” he said.

"There’s a sixth form that nobody wants. They have got to look at how much money they are spending.”

Cllr Lyn Buckingham, who sat on the board during its first year, said: “The vision that we had was completely different than the vision now.

"The projects put forward were a community building to promote skills; a cycle path to promote connectivity and data collection to use for future projects.

"The only thing that’s not changed is the data collection scheme.”

Cllr Buckingham said that the vision for the community building was for a modern six-storey construction on the piece of ground between the Saxon Crown and the Willow Place car park. The lower two floors would be used for an arts centre with community meeting rooms to replace the closed rooftop arts centre.

The top four floors were supposed to be an extra care facility for the town’s older residents funded by the town centre owners.

Cllr Buckingham added: “That’s now changed and the proposal is that the community building will be at Grosvenor House.

"The biggest problem with that at the moment is that it’s got tenants in. It’s also not accessible. There’s a small lift that goes up two stairs but the lift shaft doesn’t work.”

Cllr Buckingham said that the sixth form building was originally supposed to be an education hub that brought together green skills and jobs.

"And the cycle way was supposed to connect Elizabeth Street with the railway station,” she said. “But there’s no way to the railway station because there are steps in the way.

"Why put a cycle way under the railway bridge where the road floods?

"There’s just no connectivity. There’s no vision.

"It’s all these things which started out as something have become something else which has just been shoehorned-in. It can’t be right for Corby.

"What about levelling-up? This money was supposed to be for investment in the town. How is this an investment?”

Cllr Alison Dalziel said that the projects were unworkable. “It beggars belief,” she said.

And Cllr Seth Goddard said: “We need to make sure it’s regeneration and not gentrification. The board needs to have the interests of this town at the forefront of its mind.”

The new sixth form is due to open in September although the construction team will have to catch-up after work was delayed when the original plans became unaffordable.

The cycle lane had to undergo a public engagement after people living along the route said they had no idea it was happening until they read about it in the Northants Telegraph.

Only scant details are available about what the Smart and Connected Corby data project will entail.

And the Grosvenor House scheme has not yet got off the ground.

Cllr Rob Newby spoke about the many sites around the town centre that remain derelict. He said: “I’m gobsmacked. The whole centre of Corby is up for development. Somebody has got to be putting together a plan about what's going to happen. That discussion should be going on now.”

And Cllr Martin Reuby said: “There are better projects for this town. Where’s the levelling-up?”

Councillors have now written to the Town Deal Board to ask them to attend the town council’s next public meeting to explain the rationale behind their spending.