Labour’s disingenuous comments about Moseley Road baths

Labour’s disingenuous comments about Moseley Road baths

Readers will be aware that the Labour run administration have abandoned a Heritage Lottery Fund bid for £5million to restore Moseley Road baths; the Council would have provided £3million as match funding – the total restoration costing £8million.

Local Labour Councillor Lisa Trickett has been quoted in the local media claiming that the £3million did not exist since “no actual budget for the required £3million to match fund the Heritage Lottery Bid had been identified, let alone earmarked  by the previous administration.” This is disingenuous.

The previous administration committed £3million from future budgets, in time for 2015, if the Heritage Lottery bid was successful. This was done in a Cabinet report on 5^th March 2012. The Chief Financial officer himself was confident of finding the £3million from future capital budgets

Committing £3million from a future capital budget was acceptable to the Heritage Lottery, since they did not expect the £3million to be sitting in a bank account for two years, whilst the bid was being processed.

It is interesting to note that Councillor Trickett was critical of the previous administration for not finding the £20million to do a complete restoration of the baths, yet is content to support restoration bid being abandoned.

With both the boilers and the roof of Moseley Road baths on its last legs, it appears that Labour will now be successful in the next three years of completely closing Moseley Road baths – this will be after all be their third attempt at closing these historic baths since 1999.