Angry Burnham-On-Sea town councillors this week threatened to withdraw £35,000 of funding for the district council in protest at the authority’s decision to shut down and sell the town’s seafront toilets.
At a meeting on Monday evening (July 7th), several councillors proposed the controversial move in a bid to “force Sedgemoor District Council to sit up and take notice” of the council’s disapproval of last month’s decision to close the public loos in Seaview Road.
Cllr John Morgan told the meeting: “Sedgemoor sold off the Manor House and other assets in Burnham and now they’ve sold off these toilets too. There’s been no guarantee that the money raised will be spent here in Burnham.”
“I propose we stop being friendly to Sedgemoor – they have no goodwill towards Burnham – so let’s suspend the £35,000 of funding we’d allocated to their regeneration plans.”
Cllr Neville Jones said that while he too was “very disappointed” at the sale of the Seaview Road toilets, he had been assured that the money raised from the sale of the facilities would be “ring-fenced for Burnham.”
The proposal to withdraw the £35,000 of regeneration funding was proposed by Cllr John Morgan and seconded by Cllr Chris Williams, but failed to gain further support.
The town council decided instead send a “sternly worded” letter to the district council, registering its feelings about the sell-off.
