Spa-struck council taking a costly risk
EVERY now and again, words jump out of a council report which make you stop, return to the start of the paragraph and begin reading again.
Reading through Rossendale Council’s capital investment strategy, I was sure I’d read the authority planned to borrow £1m to fit out a spa.
Sounds bonkers doesn’t it? So I read it again and, sure enough, there it is.
As part of the Spinning Point development in Rawtenstall town centre, the council intends to borrow £7.8m to fund the building of phase 2, the bit which will include seven ‘retail and beverage units’, flats – after the council decided not to bring in a hotel as originally planned – and a spa.
The £7.8m will be repaid when the flats are sold.
So, for the sake of all our council taxes, we’d better hope they are sold quickly and on time.
And, to be fair, Rawtenstall town centre is on the up and should be a nice place to buy a flat if you’re in the market for one.
But the council also plans another loan – also from the Public Works Loan Board – of £1m to fund the fit out of the spa it seems to have decided Rossendale so desperately needs.
This is the same council which decided it couldn’t afford to keep running Haslingden Baths a few years ago and decided instead to use the money – another Public Works loan – to buy the old Valley Centre shopping centre, which has paved the way for the new shopping complex development.
While the council’s ambition for Rawtenstall town centre is to be applauded – even if the way the council has gone about it has angered many of those who didn’t like its plans – surely someone, somewhere in Futures Park must have questioned the idea of the council taking out a loan to fund the fit out of a spa.
Politically, it’s an own goal for Labour in Haslingden – and indeed any other town or village in Rossendale which feels it is constantly shortchanged compared to Rawtenstall.
That would be every community in Rossendale then.
You can almost hear the typing of the Tory leaflets: “Labour wouldn’t keep the baths open, but they will build a spa in Rawtenstall.”
If a spa is so crucial to the future of Rossendale that the council is prepared to take out a loan worth more than 12 per cent of its annual income, then surely the council could have looked to build a spa to support the new baths in Haslingden?
If the demand for a spa in Rossendale is so great, why is the council taking the funding risk to build one?
Maybe it’ll prove to be a shrewd bit of business, providing a revenue source for the council for years to come. Maybe. The council will end this financial year around £3m in debt for projects.
By the end of next year, it will be £11.8m in debt.
The council’s overall budget is around £9m.
By the end of 2022 it expects to be £12.4m in debt, much of it for the Spinning Point.
There’s an awful lot riding on the success of Spinning Point and, by extension, a spa worth paying £1m up front for.