Town councillors have this week pledged their continuing financial support to plans to regenerate Burnham-On-Sea’s High Street even though the project is now likely to be downsized amid new delays.
At a meeting on Monday evening (March 7th), councillors voted in favour of earmarking £45,000 of funding to the project.
It comes after Burnham-On-Sea.com reported last week that the town’s Civic Pride group had decided that the proposals to pave over the High Street between Cross Street and Adam Street would not go ahead before September at the earliest.
Cllr Neville Jones, who is Chairman of the Civic Pride group, told Monday’s meeting of the full town council: “The Civic Pride group understands that times are pretty hard on the High Street at the moment and that to close off a large part of it would not be the right thing to do at this time.”
“One possibility is that we proceed with a smaller scheme to introduce trees and other smaller scale improvements in the area near Bulls opticians. This is being looked at again.”
Cllr Jones went on to tell town councillors: “As we are not proceeding with the original scheme, you might want your funding back, particularly as we will not be proceeding with the project for at least six months or more.”
But town councillors voted unanimously in favour of keeping their £45,000 earmarked for the project.
Cllr Jones also revealed that Sedgemoor District Council is approaching Tesco over its pledge to give £300,000 of community RTL2 funding to the Civic Pride project.
“One of the conditions placed on Tesco’s Burnham store when it was given approval to proceed with its expansion was that it would provide £300,000 of funding as soon as building begins. As that now seems to be underway at the Love Lane store, this is being followed up,” he said.
The Civic Pride group had hoped the scheme could be introduced by Easter this year.
Sedgemoor District Council’s Executive last autumn unanimously agreed that over £158,000 of funding could be spent on creating the pedestrian-only zone.
