This month the Town Deal Board received an update on progress being made on the business cases for the Town Deal projects. Each Town Deal project must have a full business case which has to be submitted to government by the end of June 2022. The Town Deal funding for each project is only received when the full business cases are submitted and agreed with government. The first two projects that will be coming forward – planned for before the end of the year – for the Town Deal Board to review will be the Youth and Retraining Pledge and the Public Realm project. The remaining business cases will be brought forward for the Board’s review in 2022.
The sub-groups continue to support the work of the board, including a new Skills Forum sub-group that has been set up. This will be chaired by David Pomfret, Principal and Chief Executive of the College of West Anglia. This group will focus on the Youth and Retraining project, but can also link to other skills-related Towns Fund projects including the Multi-User Community Hub, and potentially the Innovation and Collaboration Incubator; although the Incubator is not one of the projects we confirmed to government to progress under the Town Deal, it is an initiative that could potentially be developed in future.
The Guildhall and Creative Hub sub-groups have made lots of progress and the passion and enthusiasm of the individuals involved in these groups was noted. Further meetings are set to take place to gain input into this project from different people in the coming months.
The Town Centre Repurposing and Public Realm sub-group also fed back progress on the Public Realm project which has seen work take place to identify a long list of possible interventions on the route from the rail station to Purfleet St. The next step is to come up with a shortlist of the preferred options for the public realm and carry out wider engagement on the proposals.
Consultation, communications, and engagement is key to the Town Deal projects and an update was also shared on current and planned activities. This includes the Young People and Pop-Ups surveys which are currently taking place to gain insight and engage people in the plans for King’s Lynn. Further consultation activities are planned alongside a rolling programme of communications that includes online and social media, media relations, and direct communications.
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