A mountain

to climb!

An interesting glimpse into plans for Boston’s future appears in a report at tonight’s meeting of the borough’s Policy and Projects Committee.

The draft economic development strategy between now and 2013 contains some ambitious objectives – but also acknowledges that improving the borough won’t be all plain sailing.
Ironically, the council’s own “State of the Borough” assessment contradicts some of the claims we heard yesterday in rebuttal of The Guardian newspaper article on Boston which was condemned as “ill-informed” by Conservative Councillor Mike Gilbert.
The report warns of people being trapped in a low skills/low wage morass – many of them with few if any qualifications; a lack of enterprise culture in the area with new business growth well below the UK average, poor quality broadband services and “a major impact” on future housing development and inward investment caused by the recent flood risk assessment.
Sadly, a list of Boston’s strengths and weaknesses shows the former outnumbered by the latter 19 to 30.
Central to all of this is something that we have been complaining about for years – the poor marketing and image of Boston.
Priorities for change include better business support, integration of the growing and diverse migrant worker and ethnic minority population, improving image marketing and awareness, and the creation of an “enterprise culture.”
Whilst we never thought that there were benefits to be had from deprivation, we learned a little-known fact from the report – that until the middle of last year, Boston was among the 12 most deprived district authority areas in the East Midlands and thus eligible for funding. However, we then moved out of the bottom 12 and lost our funding as a result. The council is now applying for transitional help for regeneration projects – without which future plans may be under threat.
Meanwhile, improvements are planned to education - and therefore skills - and better transport.
We note plans to tart up West Street, which are coupled with an admission that the much vaunted redevelopment scheme of a few years ago may not now go ahead.
Despite that, we note an even more ambitious development idea – the creation of a new marina, which would rely on private investment.
Too many eggs, too few chickens for that one, we think.
We note with pleasure ideas to promote Boston as a business, leisure and tourism destination, but with disappointment in equal measure that the job involves the vacuous Boston Business Improvement District.
All in all though, the plans acknowledge the harsh truth about what needs doing and has sensible aims and objectives to achieve it.
We await developments with interest …

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