£250k investment in King’s Lynn business hub proposed

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional money looks set to be invested into a controversial Lynn business hub, under plans to be considered tomororw.

A capital programme of spending for the next financial year, worth more than £50 million, will go before West Norfolk Council’s ruling cabinet on Tuesday afternoon.

And it contains a plan to invest a further £250,000 in potential future development of the King’s Lynn Innovation Centre.

A report to be presented to the meeting said: “This project is to carry out further technical studies to bring forward the delivery of up to 4,800 square feet of new ‘move on’ space for the King’s Lynn Innovation Centre, together with associated car parking for approximately 270 spaces to serve the Move On Centre, the original KLIC building and the wider Enterprise Zone.

“This scheme has been added to the capital programme with a budget of £250,000 fully funded by the Norfolk Strategic Fund.”

The borough council took over the running of the centre last summer after terminating its arrangement with the previous operator NWES.

NWES is due to continue repaying loans worth £2.75 million, which it originally defaulted on in the autumn of 2018, for the next three years.

But the latest proposal may prove contentious in some quarters, as it comes just four months after borough councillors voted to halt an independent inquiry into what went wrong with the project.

The council’s handling of the centre’s development was reviewed by a cross-party working group in a process which the solicitor appointed to conduct the external review concluded was satisfactory.

But critics argued the investigation had not been completed and there was a risk of the building’s reputation being tainted if the work was not carried out to the full.

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