Published: Monday, 16th September 2019
King's Lynn has this week received another boost thanks to a successful funding bid to Historic England for a grant of up to £1m under its High Street Heritage Action Zone scheme.
The scheme, which is administered by Historic England on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, is designed to bring about physical improvements along with cultural and community activities to regenerate historic high streets. The borough council submitted an expression-of-interest bid for £1m in July and were this week advised they had been successful, subject to completion of a full programme design.
Cllr Graham Middleton, Cabinet Member for Business Development at the Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk, said: "This is very exciting news for King's Lynn which links in with our other funding bids to encourage more use of the town centre and specifically the High Street and parts of Norfolk Street.
"We are looking forward to working with Historic England to develop our programme which includes enhancing the heritage buildings and public realm. Our aim is to create a thriving and active town centre by ensuring the use of the whole building with retail or commercial use and over-shop living.
"Together with our Future High Street Fund bid and the work we have already achieved through the lottery-funded Townscape Heritage Initiative and our existing Heritage Action Zone, the future is looking very bright for our town centre."
Some of the outline proposals within the bid include:
- heritage led shop front improvements
- over-shop living conversions
- provide visitor and tourism opportunities
- develop alternative uses for vacant units, such as leisure and culture
- bring vacant buildings back into use
A full programme design will be put together by a local partnership board along with Historic England and the final funding should be be confirmed in January 2020.