Letter to Bolton News (Not published)
Dear Sir,
May I be amongst the first to congratulate Bolton Council
on its receipt of the latest tranche of the New Homes Bonus.
This is of course the money paid for each new property
built in the Borough or each home brought back into use. For each property, it
is equivelant to the national average Council Tax for that property band and is
paid for each of the six years following the construction or
renovation.
The purpose of this grant is to encourage the building of
new homes and will help the Council achieve the necessary target of building 700
plus homes for each of the years up to 2025.
Bearing this in mind, it was puzzling that more effort
was not put into achieving the building of the 88 dwellings on a plot of land in
Little Lever for which planning permission had been given.
This would have produced over six years a bonus of some
£600,000 plus Section 106 monies of £238,000 for that development let alone the
ongoing Council Tax receipts.
Instead, in their wisdom, the Council chose to promote
the more controversial £5m supermarket scheme which on completion will produce
Sec 106 monies of £30,000.
Which would you have chosen?
Notwithstanding all this, I hope I am not stating the
obvious by recommending that the £8.4m received so far should not be absorbed
into the black hole of general Council expenditure, but be used to construct
further affordable homes thus attracting even more bonuses.
At a rough estimate, using land already owned by the
Council, £8.2m would build another 136 homes.
Paul Richardson
Ripon Close
Little Lever
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