Major funding secured for Melton plans for leisure park and food enterprise zone

Members of Melton Borough Council’s cabinet discussed the award of £100,000 for the planned Food Enterprise Zone at their meeting on Wednesday, with the money to be used to compile a business case to help put forward a planning application for the scheme, proposed at Melton Livestock Market.

A further £100,000 in funding has also been approved towards feasibility work being done on a Melton Health and Leisure Park, which will see facilities currently operated at Melton Sports Village and Waterfield Leisure Centre being enhanced or everything consolidated on one of the sites and surrounding land being used for developing housing, care units, hotels or business uses.

A further offer of a grant of £2million has also been made towards the leisure park scheme, conditional on the council putting forward a full business case for the project.

Consultants were engaged to look into the options for future leisure provision and associated other developments in 2018 and their work will help towards this.

The contracts for SLM (Everyone Active) to operate the sports village and Waterfield sites end in March 2022 and it was hoped the new leisure provision would be up and running by then.

The cabinet meeting was also told about a further offer of £500,000 funding towards the borough council’s plans to redevelop eight key sites it owns, to maximise commercial return on them and to regenerate parts of the borough.

Deputy leader, Councillor Leigh Higgins, told the meeting: “With what is happening with Covid-19, we have got to get over this and look forward to how we are going to shape the borough’s economy and these projects will certainly help with that.

“The development of our council-owned sites is the jewell in the crown here and there are some interesting options we can explore with those.”

Counci leader Joe Orson said the funding offers were a boost for the borough, adding: “This money towards a food enterprise zone, a Melton leisure park and developing our sites is very welcome. It’s wonderful stuff.”

The funding will come from the Business Rates Pool fund, which is administered on behalf of nine local authorities in the county by the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP).

Melton Council will be expected to match the amount being offered for funding for each project and a report which went before members revealed that this requirement would leave only £229,608 available for future capital investment which can’t be funded from borrowing.

Dawn Garton, the council’s director for corporate services, told the meeting: “It is concerning that our capital reserves will drop to just over £200,000.

“But by going ahead with these projects it will release assets for sale.

“We need to get it all going or we are sitting on assets which are not bearing fruit.”