Lancashire County Council is being asked to reconsider a bombshell decision to withdraw its support for the county’s bid to be declared a British City of Culture in 2025.
It has been more than two years since Lancashire announced that it would seek to become the first nationwide area to receive the award.
However, just weeks before the region submitted a formal expression of interest, the district council pulled through the ambitious plan – and practically left it in the water.
The move has led opposition politicians and business leaders to line up to demand that the offer be brought back from the brink, while claims that any chance to secure status and investment for the county has been missed.
As the main financier of the program, the Conservative-controlled authority no longer sees the cost of providing the program of events should the application be successful.
However, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) may reveal that an undeclared portion of the £ 770,000 previously pledged by the county council on the project has already been spent – yet there is little chance of a significant return on that money if the offer is made is not given now.
The agency set aside £ 150,000 for the initial scoping work and, under former Tory leader Geoff Driver, provided an additional £ 620,000 to develop the offering itself last July, with the document due to be presented to the government next March.
The LDRS has reached out to the District Council to find out exactly how much of this combined pot – which has been distributed to the team involved in designing the proposal – has been swallowed so far. It goes without saying that at least some of the funds remain unused.
The entire tendering process was estimated at just under £ 3 million, with the remainder coming from other local authorities in the county, as well as universities and the private sector.
The agency has stated that the estimated £ 22million cost to deploy the project – should Lancashire emerge victorious – is why it is no longer able to secure the prestigious title.
However, papers presented to the county council’s cabinet last summer confirm that while there is no guaranteed funding related to the UK City of Culture nomination, previous holders of the honor cash from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) of the Government and organizations like the Arts Council to help make their successful visions a reality.
If Lancashire had been offered similar amounts if it had a successful bid, it is estimated that about 85 percent of the delivery cost would have been covered – meaning the county council and all other local partners would have been held liable for a little more than £ 3 million.
Reactions to County Hall withdrawing from the application as it neared its final stages ranged from dismay to conviction.
Labor opposition leader Azhar Ali said he wanted to reverse the decision – and revealed that he was calling for an emergency full council meeting.
“It’s a huge kick in the teeth for our creative industries and tourism – and for Lancashire as a place to visit, work and enjoy.
“This would have created hundreds if not thousands of jobs – and this new Tory administration is just getting it started.
“It just goes to show that they are utterly incapable – and they wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds in taxpayer money instead of investing in Lancashire.
“This was a great opportunity to promote Lancashire across Europe and beyond – and now we don’t even have a wet primer,” said County Cllr Ali.
Tony Attard, chairman of Lancashire 2025 and advertising organization Marketing Lancashire, said it was with “great sadness” to announce that Lancashire was no longer in the running – especially since he believed the title was within reach. But he added that the project would be “untenable” without the support of the county.
“The idea of Lancashire becoming a City of Culture by 2025 has matured over a four-year period and included councilors and officers from Lancashire County Council and County and Unit Agencies and the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership.
“The many people involved, including talented people from the private sector, have done a considerable amount of work. We researched at a very high level and worked with the Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport to create a compelling, innovative and original offer.
“The application for the City of Culture is a competitive process because the rewards for winning are so important. Lancashire has five of the UK’s most deprived areas within its borders and we have been hit harder by Covid 19 than most other places – the people of Lancashire shouldn’t be deprived of these rewards.
“We had a very good chance of winning this prestigious title, we put the work into it and created the partnerships that set us apart from the competition. It is devastating that we are now being forced to withdraw just three weeks before we should make our formal expressions of interest, ”added Attard.
Speaking to the LDRS, Frank McKenna, CEO of the business organization Downtown in Business, said it was a “big mistake” for the county to throw in the towel – and rejected the proposal to leave the county council on the hook for everything like £ 22 million .
“Marketing Lancashire has done a lot of work showing that one successful offer can generate hundreds of millions of pounds in the Lancashire economy. Although the county council would take on £ 22m for this, the vast majority of that would be covered by lottery and DCMS funding – the idea that this won’t happen in this case is for the birds.
“We have a great opportunity to win – and I just want to urge the District Council to take a look at Liverpool and see the change the city has made since it was named European Capital of Culture – it’s so great initiatives that your economic Can catapult growth prospects.
“I ask the leadership of the district council to review their decision because I think this is a short-term solution that will pose challenges in the longer term.
It’s not well received in Westminster, and certainly not in the Lancashire business community.
“I haven’t seen anything that has brought people together like this offer – and I think it sends out all the wrong signals about the future collaboration that we hope to see develop,” said Mr. McKenna.
The leader of the Greens in the district assembly, Gina Dowding, said that art and culture “have so much to offer our well-being and our economy” – and that the failure of the application is therefore “very disappointing”.
“The application for the city of culture itself would have sharpened the profile of our cultural offerings on a national level and helped the entire district recover after Covid,” she added.
However, recently appointed Lancashire County Council vice chairman Alan Vincent, who is also responsible for the bureau’s finances, said the bid was a risk the county could not afford.
Earlier this month, he told a cabinet meeting that the agency needed to save a total of £ 43 million this fiscal year after the pandemic caused the agency to miss a savings target of £ 30 million in 2020-21.
“We have carefully examined the potential costs and benefits of the offer and have determined that the Lancashire County Council can no longer accept the offer. We know this will be disappointing to those who have worked so hard on this project over the past few years, but we believe it is the right decision for Lancashire County Council.
“While the proposal was strong and ambitious, we felt that taking on the offer of up to £ 22million posed too great a financial risk for the Council at a time when there is significant pressure on services and ours There are costs and ongoing financial uncertainty. ”After the pandemic.
“Lancashire County Council remains committed to an ongoing arts and culture program that benefits both the county’s residents and the local economy.
“We continue to work on sustainable and revitalized offerings for our museums and are fully committed to cultural services in Lancashire. We will continue to invest in our libraries and support innovative projects such as the Re-imagining the Harris project in Preston.
“We will seek to incorporate elements of the proposal as we develop a new culture and sports strategy over the coming months and years,” added County Cllr Vincent.
It’s very different from last summer when then-Cabinet Member for Economic Development Michael Green said the title could be a “key part of our recovery from the current crisis.”
“It will help us develop cultural, social and digital skills … and raise the profile of Lancashire nationally and internationally,” he said in July 2020.
The county’s application should be based on the concept of Lancashire as a “virtual city”.
The creative program, released last year, stated that it would focus on what unites the diverse county – “dissolving our real and imaginary boundaries to create a truly representative view of Lancashire” – while leaving room for the “cultural Personalities ”of the four corners to reflect the district for which the proposal is conceived.
These will be based on areas called “Downtown” (Preston, Chorley and South Ribble), “Uptown” (Lancaster, Ribble Valley and Pendle), “Light Coast” (Blackpool, Fylde, Wyre and West Lancashire) and “The Valley “(Blackburn, Burnley, Hyndburn and Rossendale).
As recently as February, Applications Director Debbi Lander presented the fine details of the proposal at a meeting of the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership’s innovation committee.
Lancashire should have faced Bradford, Medway and Southampton for the title. The Tees Valley pulled out of the race earlier this month.
