Millions spent on

non-council projects

It looks as though Boston’s troubled leisure services are lurching towards yet another crisis.
Tomorrow’s Performance Review Committee agenda includes the latest Governance and Performance Monitoring Quarterly Report for the period April to December last year, which warns that the Geoff Moulder leisure centre is now subject to a review of the capital programme to be considered by the cabinet.
Readers will recall that the centre – along with the Princess Royal Sports Arena – was due to be “privatised” in a deal with a company called Leisure Connections.
Leisure Connections is in a class of its own, as it has a website dedicated to the scores of complaints from users of the local authority sporting facilities that it administers – many of them here in Lincolnshire.
The announcement of the deal was made a year ago with promises of major savings for taxpayers.
Unusually for a BBI promise, this has not been the case, and some crucial paperwork needed to clinch the deal has not been forthcoming until now – although the council has yet to see a copy.
The deal includes the borough taking responsibility for maintaining the PRSA – a wooden structure which began leaking within months of opening – and also to carry out a revamp of the Moulder facility … but this £2.2 million plan is now on hold.
Leisure Connection has proposed alternative schemes to cut costs, and the Chief Executive will report on this to the council.
Meanwhile, consultancy costs of £130,000 on the GMLC are to be written off to the council’s revenue budget.
We don’t know about you, but we can’t see anything good coming out of all this.
Some other interesting items from the report include the latest on usage of the £3.6 million Boston Enterprise Centre.
A while ago it had an occupancy rate of just 17% - but it now stands at 81% which means that 36 of the 45 office suites are occupied.
It may sound good, but we are also told that in the 12 months between April 2009 and March 2010 the centre hosted 3,074 visitors. That equates to 256 a month … 64 a week, or 12 a day.
Value for money?
We think not.
Finally a look at the council’s projected spending by priority again underlines our argument that Boston splashes out too much on areas which are pepripheral responsibilities.
The figures include £1,551,000 on “health and wellbeing” – an overspend of £60,000 – and £448,000 on “crime” … another overspend - this time of £31,000. Lincolnshire NHS and the county police must be laughing all the way to the bank when they see how much money Boston is spending on work which is their job.
Also interesting is “housing strategy” which is estimated to overspend £23,000 out of a total of £1,394,000.
It’s twelve years since Boston flogged its housing stock to Mayflower, and its “policy” now appears to comprise homeless prevention and offering quality homes at affordable rents.
Clearly a sum of £1.3 million won’t provide much by way of bricks and mortar, so how does this cost break down?
It would be interesting to know.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested