Shane Croucher

Every year, £1,000 is allocated to each City of Lincoln councillor as part of the “Ward Budget” scheme. People from the community can then put in bids to the councillors to get some of the money, for all sorts of reasons.

As this year’s councillors settle in, they’ll soon have their hands on the ward budgets once again, deciding who gets how much.

So how were ward budgets spent for 2010/11?

One of the biggest winners last year is Dance Factor, a local scheme across eight of Lincoln’s wards that tries to involve children in dance.

The scheme applied for £1,610 in total, from 11 different councillors. It got the full amount it applied for.

However, the applicant that received the most funding is the 28th Lincoln Scout Group, that was handed £3,000 in total by all the ward councillors in Bracebridge. The summary states “carried forward as agreed”, suggesting this is a continuation of funding from the previous year.

Lincoln City Supporters Club got £1,000 from Councillor Bud Robinson of Park Ward, for “funding for hire of LCFC (Lincoln City Football Club) facilities to run facilities/activities for the benefit of residents of Park Ward.”

Here’s a spreadsheet of where the money from ward budgets went in 2010/11 for you to search through.

More student housing, another hotel or office spaces, are just three proposed uses of Lincoln’s Tentercroft Street in a new report.

Tentercroft Street is earmarked for redevelopment if the proposed East West road link gets the necessary funding and it is built.

The three landowners on the street, Lincolnshire County Council, City of Lincoln Council and Lincolnshire Co-operative, commissioned Globe Consultants to write a “feasibility study” into potential uses for the area.

Other suggestions include a multi-storey car park and community centres, such as a library. The report notes that community-focused uses for the area are “only viable if commercial values are achieved”.

Globe anticipates that commercial use of the land gives it a Gross Development Value of £69 million. However, it would cost £57 million to develop the site to reach this potential. Currently, it estimates the site’s worth at £10 million.

Tentercroft Street, as it currently stands

According to the report’s conclusion: “The most financially advantageous approach to this site in the short term is to maintain the status quo: car parking produces the highest revenue and establishes the site’s current value.

“However, there is a clear expectation that, looking forward, this well-located site should deliver more than just the best immediate financial income. Its development has the clear potential to deliver a range of economic, social and environmental benefits and it may be considered that maximising the delivery of these is an equal or overriding objective.

“In that context, the key requirement may be more one of minimising a gap [in] funding requirement than maximising a sales profit.”

Paul Wheatley, the County Council’s Head of Economic Regeneration Programmes, said: “It remains the aspiration of Lincolnshire County Council to see vibrant, mixed-use redevelopment in this part of the city, supported by a quality highway.”

The proposals will be discussed at Lincolnshire County Council’s next Economic Scrutiny Committee on June 14.

Photos: Kelly Moore for The Lincolnite