Newark Town Councillors make market place plans wish list priorities for allocation of £3.6m in Towns Fund investment

A council has listed what it thinks should be prioritised when it comes to investment in a Newark Market Place.

Newark Town Council has been asked to consult on how £3.6m of Towns Fund money should be invested into the town’s historic square by Newark and Sherwood District Council.

In November, the town council was presented with a number of proposals involving new additions or changes to existing infrastructure. On this occasion it was agreed that public art should be prioritised, but the installation of more cycle storage or some sort of water feature were deemed unnecessary and therefore the lowest priority.

However, councillors were unable to come to a firm conclusion on many of the other proposals, such as resurfacing the cobbles, and asked for simplification of the process.

Now, the proposals have been brought back to the council with a simple yes or no response system — if unsure about an idea, councillors were asked to say yes at this stage with the understanding that they could be ruled out at a later date.

Members took a majority vote on each proposal and came to a conclusion on which items should prioritised.

Councillors were in favour of; alfresco dining, planters and rain gardens, biodiversity, power and utilities, market stalls, events space, seating, lighting, tactile public art, review of vehicular access, review of bollards, hostile vehicle mitigation, sustainable urban drainage systems, cost of delivery and ongoing maintenance, reducing clutter, signage and wayfaring, improving CCTV, sustainable travel options, and improving disabled access.

They were not in favour of prioritising; greening, water features, USB charging ports, or new public toilets.

The town council’s indications of desirability are not final decisions, and will merely inform plans for the market which are due to be drawn up by the district council.

The £3.6m in funding, provided by the previous government, is made up of £1.5m in capital investment originally allocated to the market as part of the Newark Heart project, as well as £2.1m which has been re-allocated from the Newark Gateway project.