Last meeting of SMTI
Last night the final meeting of the Stone Market Town Initiative was held in the Town Council chamber. Tim Scott, the Programme Coordinator, gave a PowerPoint presentation overview of the scheme. The SMTI was formed in 2003, with a lifetime of five years, on the basis of a £500,000 fund being made available by Advantage West Midlands to regenerate the market town of Stone and the surrounding areas. Any funding from SMTI had to be matched by at least the same amount from the applicant scheme. I was appointed to the Board as the Town Council’s representative and attended my first Board meeting in December 2005, by which time the various projects were already in place.
Tim’s presentation explained the various projects over the last five years. The canal improvement scheme currently underway, Stone Dominoes Football Club’s ground improvements, a Rural Chest shared between a couple of dozen groups and organisations, Town Centre marquees, a Town Centre coordinator, shop front improvements and retail marketing workshops are all beneficiaries of the Initiative. Final figures will not be available until the scheme formally come to end on March 31st.
Like most projects of this size, hindsight dictates that, given the chance again, the scheme would be handled rather differently. And despite the fact that there will be some permanent legacies, there will, inevitably, be criticism when the final figures are published. On balance however I believe that, in years to come, it will be possible to say that the SMTI achieved real results and propagated other schemes and projects, yet to come to fruition, which will benefit the town.
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