Update on the Kirklees Wide Town Centres and Small Centres Programme
To receive an update and presentation on the Kirklees Wide Town Centres and Small Centres Programme.
Contact: Simon Taylor, Head of Town Centre Programmes
Minutes:
Simon Taylor, Head of Town Centres Programme, provided the Panel with an update on the Batley levelling up scheme, which forms part of the wider Batley local centres programme.
In summary, the Panel was advised that Batley is the biggest investment in the smaller local centres, and, by way of a reminder, there has been a successful outcome to the LUF2 bid, and since then work has been undertaken with Deluc to agree the terms of that award. An external project management team, Turner and Townsend, has been appointed, and they came on board in June 2023. There are many projects across the council, and there was a need to bring in specialised people to assist with the project in Batley.
They were asked to undertake a review the cost of that scheme to ensure that it was within budget. The reason for the review, was that between submission and the announcement, there was a long delay, and during that time there has been a fluctuation in interest rates. It is therefore important to understand exactly what can be afforded from that award. Whilst the award has not changed in its number, the costs that go into the scheme has. That exercise has now been completed, and at this stage, the money that has been awarded and put to one side from the Council is sufficient to deliver each of the four elements, however, this will be kept under review while going through the design phases.
It is currently at reba stage two, and there is a cost assigned to that, and each stage costs will be reviewed, and recommendations will be made to the board about how to deliver elements of the scheme be it through value engineering or pausing or doing something slightly different.
A review of the programme has also been undertaken, and importantly, some of the time has been filled with surveys that needed to be done, for example, surveys around 39 Commercial Street in Batley, and all the condition surveys have been completed.
There are
four elements to Batley:
Tesco Link - the link between Commercial Street and Tesco, which is
effectively trying to bridge the gap between the large supermarket
to allow people to move more freely between the supermarket and the
main part of the town.
Commercial Street - is an upgrade of the main St in Batley. It is very much as streetscape project, however, one of the key objectives, is to make it much more pedestrian friendly, particularly as the feedback received is that there is a lot of anti-social driving behaviour, people parking where they should not be parking and speeding through the town.
Market Place - upgrading Market Place, which is the area outside of the town hall, which is approximately 30 to 40 years old, and therefore needs an uplift with the aim to make more of a usable space for events and markets.
39 Commercial Street – the largest building on Commercial Street which is owned by ... view the full minutes text for item 7