Home   News   Article

Subscribe Now

Breckland Council vote to invest £1.5 million into communities




Breckland Council members have approved plans to invest £1.5 million in a number of community projects across the region.

Councillors are supporting plans to improve leisure services in Swaffham, including gym facilities, climbing walls and Astroturf football pitches.

They also voted to boost small businesses and help residents into higher paid employment across the district at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Among the agreed proposals are plans to take ownership of empty shops and then lease them at reduced rates to start-up businesses.

They say this would create new ‘Dragons Den’-style grant scheme to support local entrepreneurs, and extra help for people to make the most of employment opportunities through the provision of travel bursaries or moped hire.

Council members also agreed to put in extra investment in customer services support, including to help residents transition to the Universal Credit scheme.

Breckland Council leader, William Nunn said: “Approval for this range of projects is fantastic news for our district’s residents and businesses.

“At the start of the year we set aside a considerable amount of money to be invested in our communities and the vast range of schemes given approval today will mean that money makes a big difference locally.

“These initiatives will improve local facilities and services, support people to access better jobs, and help existing and new businesses to succeed.”

Another scheme aims to improve connections between businesses and residents by employing new staff to liaise between companies, schools and job centres.

They say this will help to identify a skills shortfall among businesses and encourage the necessary training to be offered to enable local people to make the most of the employment opportunities and to support businesses to grow.

Approval of the proposals means the majority of the £1.7m funding set aside by councillors in the 2018/19 budget has now been allocated to projects.

And a further £1.4m is set to be invested in community projects in 2019/20.

Following approval from cabinet, these proposed projects will now be progressed further and developed before being implemented.

And due to the value of some of the schemes, some projects will be presented to full council for their final approval at a future meeting.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More