Delight as Council gets more time to put residents at the heart of driving lasting change

Published Wednesday, 24th July 2024

Regeneration chiefs in Hartlepool have welcomed a Government decision to extend a deadline for submissions to help shape a multi-million pound town centre investment programme.

It comes after they had called for more time to allow the fullest possible community involvement.

Hartlepool was one of 55 towns selected by the Government to be part of its Long Term Plan for Towns – a programme aimed at supporting regeneration in town centres through providing greater community and stakeholder involvement in investment in local priorities.

£20m in capital and revenue funding support will be provided to the town over the coming years in addition to the investment already received through programmes such as Town Deal and the Levelling Up Fund.

Since receiving confirmation of the funding, Hartlepool Borough Council has embarked on comprehensive community-led consultation to help ensure the communities it serves are at the centre of shaping the ten-year vision statement and three-year investment plan required by the Long Term Plan for Towns.

However, the outgoing Government had stipulated that the vision statement and investment plan had to be submitted by 1st August this year – a timescale which the Council and other stakeholder and community partners felt did not give enough time to fully involve local people.

This was particularly the case because, in common with many local authorities, the Council had to pause its public consultation due to the national restrictions in place in the run-up to the local and national elections.

Councillor Pamela Hargreaves, Chair of the Council’s Economic Growth and Regeneration Committee, said: “We were delighted to receive Government confirmation this week that it has suspended the August deadline, particularly as I had recently written to the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, to make her aware that the deadline had always been challenging for us to meet, especially as we want to ensure our submission clearly demonstrates that it has been developed with, and is co-owned by, our local communities.

“The Long Term Plan for Towns programme has given us a unique opportunity to achieve our desire to reposition the Council’s role and relationship with the communities we serve and put them at the heart of driving lasting change in our town. We now have proper time to help work towards that.”