On Tuesday 23rd November Bridgwater Town Council’s Town Development Forum met to scrutinise the long awaited Town Deal Fund.  The meeting was held in  Bridgwater Town Hall and featured  KEITH THOMAS the lead consultant for PER Consultants alongside the Town Council’s Economy Portfolio Holder  Cllr Mick Lerry. Bridgwater Town Deal includes some £22.6 million for some 11 projects. This amounts to 94% of what was requested. This was added to by the ‘Levelling Up’ fund which added a further £10 million, thereby allowed 2 of these projects to be funded by this and more money to be allocated around the other 9 projects. The next phase involves increased public consultation, hence the appearance at the Town Development Forum.

Chairing the meeting, Town Council Leader Cllr Brian Smedley (Westover) said “The Town Deal initiative was introduced by this Government a couple of months before the 2019 General Election. It’s stated purpose was to regenerate town centres to boost businesses, improve infrastructure and bring communities together. As one of 101 towns named by the Government as eligible, Bridgwater was able to bid for up to £25 million from a national £3.6 billion Towns Fund pot. However, Bridgwater Town Council is NOT in the driving seat here – that’s Sedgemoor District Council, which in fact only now has 2 years of life left in it. “

“Bridgwater Town Council-despite being the potential chief benefactor, was allowed just one rep on the board and that’s Cllr Mick Lerry, our Economy portfolio holder.  Mick has done a great job in ensuring that the projects included go some way to matching the towns aspirations. That said we need to be clear that this money is clearly not adequate to address all the issues the town faces and people would be wrong to suggest or assume that it is. In fact it doesn’t even amount to a 1/4 of the cost of the by-pass that people said was the towns priority when EDF asked what we wanted and then said we couldn’t have it. But this is money offered and we will take it. The whole process comes at a very strange time when we are going through a totally unnecessary and unwanted major re-haul of local government. Somerset will become even more all-powerful (they’re not here tonight and don’t engage at the best of times), Sedgemoor are the key authority-but will be abolished within 2 years and so it’s down to Bridgwater Town Council -the smallest of the councils with the least powers at our disposal, to pick up the pieces. This will hopefully change after Unitary and we will regain the powers that we lost back in the 1970s. This meeting tonight was the start of a wider community engagement to ensure that we make the best use of the money that is there. For this reason we are releasing the minutes of the meeting publicly.”