Changes planned for Preston £20m Levelling Up cash

Preston will not lose any of the £20m it was awarded in ‘levelling up’ cash – in spite of changing how it plans to spend it.

The government has approved a request from Preston City Council to cancel one of the seven regeneration projects that formed part of its bid for the funding in 2022.

Last year, the authority decided to ditch a controversial blueprint for an overhaul of Ashton Park – in the face of both public opposition and spiralling costs across all of its Levelling Up Fund schemes.

Councillors voted to reallocate the £9.7m earmarked for the revamp – which included a new 3G football pitch, sports pavilion and car park – across the remaining six projects.

However, the scale of the change – involving almost half the total amount originally allocated to the city by the previous Conservative government – meant the council had to ask the new Labour administration for permission to move the money around.

Theoretically, the entire cash pot could have been taken back by ministers – a prospect the authority previously cited as justification for pressing ahead with the Ashton Park plans, even as disquiet amongst locals grew louder.   In February last year, deputy council leader Martyn Rawlinson appealed to members not to “risk all that money” by changing course.

By July, however, ballooning bills for all of Preston’s levelling up projects forced a rethink, as revealed by the Local Democracy Reporting Service. The Ashton Park plans were ultimately jettisoned in order to save the other schemes from what was a collective £5m shortfall caused by what the town hall said were rocketing construction costs.

The city council formally asked the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to give the green light to the changes – and this week the authority was advised that its so-called ’project adjustment request’ had been accepted.

That means the six other projects – namely, the replacement of the Old Tram Bridge between Avenham Park and Penwortham, a new segregated east-west city centre cycle lane along Queen Street and Avenham Lane, public space improvements to Friargate South and Cheapside, and a series of sport-related and other upgrades to Moor Park, Grange Park and Waverley Park – are now financially secure .

The authority was tied in to the tram bridge project regardless of the government’s decision, as work had already begun on the new cross-river connection before the rethink over Ashton Park.

Cllr Valerie Wise, cabinet member for community wealth building and city regeneration, acknowledged at a council meeting on Thursday the move had been a gamble – but said confirmation of the funding was “very good news for Preston”.

She added: “Obviously, we were taking some risks – particularly with the Tram Bridge, because we [said] we were going to fund that anyway whatever happens.  [But] now [the money] will be coming from the Levelling Up Fund, [as]…everything that was requested has been agreed.”