As you will know we were incredibly proud this summer to have achieved an offer of £17.5m to invest in Todmorden’s growth and regeneration. However, this did mean we were offered less than our target to undertake the range of projects we outlined in our initial Town Investment Plan (TIP).
We won’t go into the details here but obviously, we had some difficult decisions to make about reducing all the projects’ budgets or cutting some projects altogether.
We considered a range of options: reductions in project-specific budgets, making cuts and undertaking some amalgamations of projects. We have now reprioritised projects and revised the investment plan to meet the government’s offer.
Having completed this process, we have resubmitted the TIP which will be explained during the following event.
Whilst we await the government’s views on our revisions, we want to take the opportunity to reconnect face to face with the people of our town.
Many of you will remember the extremely well-attended Citizens’ Forum we held in January to outline our TIP.
It is timely to come together again now so we can celebrate what we have achieved since then, and outline proposals for future initiatives we’d like to undertake, both in the TIP and those which will complement the work that the £17.5M will facilitate.
During this forum, board members will:
- Outline the process we have gone through since January
- Review the project successes we have already had
- Explain our criteria around such matters of Youth Engagement, Sustainability and Diversity that we have adopted for each project to include.
- Present the projects we have put forward following a reprioritising review undertaken, as a result of the government offer being less than we originally bid for.
- Demonstrate our commitment and plans to use this investment as a catalyst to seek wider investments for the town.
- Introduce our proposals for ongoing local consultations with you.
We will be holding two consecutive events, one live and one online, on Zoom.
The live event will be on the afternoon of Sunday 7th November from 3 pm – 5 pm at the Hippodrome Theatre – and the Zoom event will be from 7 pm – 9 pm on the following evening of Monday 8th November.
Attendance is of course completely free of charge but both events are ticketed as they were on the initial Citizens’ Forums back in January.
We very much look forward to seeing you at one of these meetings.
