A costly way

to say it

with flowers

We complained the other day about the excessive way that we are nannied by Boston Borough Council – and another excellent example is in the Placecheck scheme.
Five run-down areas of Boston were selected to benefit from the project, which is now three-quarters complete.
Like many projects run by the council – and very similar to the way Boston BID operates - Placecheck spends tons of money on administration to achieve a relatively minor effect.
A total of £105,000 has been made available – of which half is swallowed up by administration costs.
Residents in each of the five selected areas are invited to come up with ideas for spending £10,000 on ways to improve their particular neck of the woods.
We can’t say whether or not strings are being pulled, but the projects invariably have a familiar ring and similarity to them.
You can guess the sort of thing …
“Payback” projects where felons collect litter, gardening projects for school kids, tarting up of local church premises used for community meeting purposes, bulb planting projects, football and basketball equipment, more litter and dog waste bins, and in one case provision by the police of home security equipment - a service they often provided freely until someone came along and offered to pay for it!
Some of these projects involve employing a probation service worker to supervise the offenders employed on litter picking duties – whilst another wants to use them for bulb planting on a roundabout.
If some of these duties sound familiar, it is because they are.
Many are tasks already carried out by other organisations as part of the paid for services they provide … often as a statutory responsibility.
Litter collection is a good example. We pay for it through our council tax as one of the few services provided by Boston Borough Council – and now it is being charged a second time through the Placecheck kitty.
The other thing is that most of the projects seem to be redolent of the era of Disney’s Main Street USA. – where people lived in an ideal, neighbourly, polite and litter free community.
By all means let’s redecorate our church halls – but will it bring in more people?
Who stops to marvel at a roundabout glowing with colourful flowers? If they can’t be eaten they’ll be stolen, and if a passer-by is in their car, driven over.
And the days of youngsters kicking a ball about in the park have long been kicked into touch by the chance to tackle Beckham of Rooney on a Playstation screen.
We’re not saying that this is a good thing – quite the reverse.
But the whole Placecheck project smacks of busywork and spending money for the sake of it.
What next? “Rolling out Placecheck to a number of rural areas of the borough is the next logical step and is something which officers are currently scoping,” says a council report. “Engaging and empowering communities revitalises areas and improves lives, Placecheck is therefore a real opportunity for our residents to shape the areas in which they live.”
As long as they use flowers to do it.


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