LETTER: Is it worth spending money on '˜at risk' buildings?

Your article relating to buildings at risk in the town has posed me the question as to the likelihood of money from the Heritage Lottery Fund being spent on the town hall building, as clearly the amount involved at £55,000 is more half of the grant available.
By The Newsroom
Published 17th Apr 2017, 11:00 BST
Updated 9th May 2017, 18:48 BST

This is for a building that few of the town residents ever go into (or perhaps don’t know what it’s for). It may have an iconic presence in the scarcely occupied Market Place, but is it worth spending so much on such a building against its use or lack of it in a back drop of so many austerity cuts in services, whatever fund it all comes out of?
As for properties such as the old Blake & Bealy frontage beneath the viaduct, surely this cannot be an important building at risk, whoever could claim architectural or cultural merit in such as this? Expenditure on this from the grant would surely be a waste, especially since it is clear that nobody wants to occupy and use it set against the dereliction that is now Church Street.
I’d also like to comment on the Lindhurst development since you refer in your article to a hefty ‘grant’ in connection with this, and work is clearly beginning on site.
Why is it in my mind that we will get the houses but, when the time comes for the industrial and warehousing development (with up to 4,000 jobs), then that will be another matter (and some more houses instead?). Perhaps it’s the example clearly demonstrated by the lonesome Prologic Park on the MARR standing in total disuse after massive expenditure on all the infrastructure, which will probably be worn out by some unknown time in the future, when it might eventually begin to be occupied.

Concerned
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