Town to add 'green corridor' with levelling up cash
Scunthorpe is to get a "green corridor" through the High Street to make it more "visually appealing", North Lincolnshire Council said.
The authority was awarded £500,000 of levelling up money last May to brighten up the area and make it greener.
New seating and planters will also be installed in Jubilee Way, the main shopping area of Scunthorpe.
Labour councillor Mashook Ali said the plans will improve the area, but "more needs to happen" to revitalise High Street.
Ali said the plans would help improve the environment adding the council's parks and green spaces department had done some "outstanding" landscaping in North Lincolnshire.
"We are confident that they will create imaginative and appropriate planting and seating for the High Street," he said.
Conservative council leader Rob Waltham said the council were committed to making the area a "more visually appealing and vibrant space".
According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the project is due to start in early 2025.
In 2023, the council was awarded almost £16m from the government's third round of levelling up funding to regenerate Scunthorpe's town centre.
Labour councillor Lorraine Yeadon noted that the costs of the work on the Elizabeth Quarter at the former market site and the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Gardens had risen to £13.9m in 2022 and the revamp to the outside the council's HQ cost over £1m.
Yeadon said that if a fraction of that money had been spent on the High Street it would have benefited local people.
The councillor said a new community centre was "desperately needed in the area", to replace the existing facility Carlton Street which she said was used by over 800 people each week.
Yeadon also suggested that some of the funds could have been spent on a new leisure facility for teenagers.
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