TOWN Hall chiefs at Warrington will be urged next week to give their full backing to seven major projects providing huge benefits to the town and offering the possibility of £26.56 million government funding.
Members of the council’s cabinet have been brought up to date on the Town Investment Plan (TIP) and told it is vital that the seven projects receive their full support if the borough is to be successful in winning the government money through the Towns Fund.
Council officers have been working on TIP for months, although there was an understandable pause caused by emergency work arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the TIP was prepared on time, was the subject of widespread consultation and has won the support of many local organisations and individuals including the town’s two MPs.
The projects are:
*A health and social care academy – which will support workers to integrate the latest technology into their work, and will offer opportunities to build a social care workforce in Warrington fit for the future.
*A health and wellbeing hub in the town centre – which will help reduce health deprivation and improve quality of life, as well as increasing accessibility to healthcare and wellbeing services. The hub would be developed in vacant retail space in the town centre and will help provide more mental health services, assessments for older people and access to a range of council health and wellbeing services.
*An advanced construction training centre – which will develop sustainable building skills and provide an opportunity to reskill people in sectors that have declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. This project would provide training across many disciplines including housebuilding, surveying, plumbing and civil engineering.
*An all-electric bus fleet depot – which will provide the stimulus for the full electrification of a Warrington bus fleet and replace the current Warrington’s Own Buses depot with land for sustainable housing.
*A comprehensive active travel programme – putting in place the right infrastructure to encourage more walking and cycling throughout the town centre. This would include redesigning key town centre streets with cyclists and pedestrians in mind, establishing a Community Cycle Hub in the town centre and would ensure a series of bus priority measures to encourage people to take public or active transport methods.
*A digital enterprise hub – which would be aimed at supporting all aspects of digital and disruptive technologies.
*A remastered cultural hub at the Pyramid – which will nurture the arts professionals of the future, providing a modern and flexible creative space to collaborate, produce, present and perform. A refurbished Pyramid will improve Warrington’s cultural offering, attracting a range of high quality touring artists, as well as providing a platform to showcase local talent.
The TIP will deliver benefits across the whole borough and provide Warrington with the opportunity to immediately tackle many of the problems caused by Covid-19.
Some 100 other councils across the country are also bidding for government money through the Towns Fund.
