Tenbury Town Council were told tonight, not to sit back and wait for Flood Defence funding. If the expectation is that they will be centrally funded "it's not going to happen."
Anthony Perry, the Flood Risk Manager for the Environment Agency explained that the money is out there, but it won't come to you.
Various organisations such as AWM, WCC & MHDC have money to spend, but they all have different priorities.
If the Town Council feel that a Flood Alleviation scheme is essential then they must lead a multi agency project looking at the problems and the solutions. Money is available for technical assistance, but the desire, vision and leadership, must be local.
The project can include aspects which are for sustainability and for regeneration, and can be for implementation over a number of years.
There is no point spending effort in trying to change the system, as that has no guarantee of success and if the criteria is changed Tenbury may still be no better of.
It was accepted that the Councillors may not have the necessary skills to lead this project, but should canvas support locally to find someone who can deliver this project.
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2 comments:
Plenty of money is readily available. The Government has trillions, even MHDC has millions. The plain fact is, only the people of Tenbury and Burford care about Tenbury flooding. Compare how much MHDC has spent on their Theatre and their Splash over the last 10 years with how much they have spent on flood defences (or anything else) in Tenbury over the same period!
I'm not sure MHDC are an obvious place to fund Flood Works, but they can be approached for grants to facilitate projects to get the ball rolling. I hear that a group outside the Council is being formed to progress the question of flood defenses.
The town council seem to spend a lot of time, thinking up and passing motions and voting and deferring decisions, and not a lot of time, researching problems and looking for solutions (which sometimes need "out of the box" thinking)
When I was a Councillor (another time and place) I obtained thousands of pounds, by chasing grants. A new gate was always a "disabled access", the clearance of scrub was an "environmental improvement". Perhaps not entirely honest, but it got the job done, ticked the boxes of the funding authority and everyone was happy.
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