MARK Jenkinson MP has hit out at a “sham” consultation into investment plans for Maryport.
The Labour-led Cumberland Council has announced a series of drop-in events to discuss its ‘Plan B’ following its controversial decision to cancel ‘Plan A’ – a fully funded swimming pool at the Wave which enjoyed overwhelming community support.
The authority has listed three ‘options’: which include reconfiguring the Wave, enhancing the harbourside area, or making improvements to the promenade.
But the MP has described information circulated by the authority as “disingenuous” after it has emerged that only one of the schemes is a realistic prospect – the least ambitious of the three.
He said: “Most of these options are not options at all. This disingenuous press release gives only the illusion of choice.
“Of the three options they have chosen to focus on in the so-called ‘news’ release, only one is deliverable – the ‘reconfiguring’ of The Wave, which is tantamount to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
“The Wave itself is a white elephant subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of £200,000 a year. The pool, which was fully funded and deliverable, would have made it viable. But as we know, Labour-led Cumberland, in its infinite wisdom, chose to scrap the pool.
“Of the eight alternative ‘options’ set out by Cumberland in their own ‘Summary of Project Options; document, seven have either been ruled out as undeliverable due to budget or timescales or else have been dismissed as unattractive.
“The press release talks up enhancing the harbourside area which is not under council ownership. It also talks about building a shop and café on the Promenade which falls outside the Future High Streets boundary – the area for which the £11.5m Government funding had been earmarked.
Any consultation based on these ‘options’ is therefore a sham. Having backed itself into a corner, the Executive has already decided what it is doing and what it is not doing.
“This again shows a council floundering and out of its depth, prepared to mislead the people of Maryport. It again shows that the limit of the leadership’s vision and aspiration is to preside over the managed declined of towns like Maryport. This is all Labour has to offer.”
