Some district council industrial units have been described as ‘neglected’ as the authority introduces a charge to businesses in an attempt to improve them.
South Holland District Council lets 50 units at sites in Holbeach, Spalding, Crowland and Sutton Bridge.
The latter, off Railway Lane, is the largest with 14 units and its state was particularly criticised when a report went to the authority’s Performance Monitoring Panel last week.
Its chair Coun Michael Booth said: “I’ve been concerned about this for a long while and if we want to look at the viability of these units, we need to get our own house in order.
“We’ve let them get into a terrible state.
“It’s not been managed very well, certainly at Sutton Bridge.
“There’s a lot of money that’s got to be spent now to make them attractive enough for people to go in.
“It’s just off the A17 and near the port so there’s plenty of potential for small businesses that want to get started.
“I’ve had a number of people asking me about them, but when they go and look at them they say well someone’s got to do a lot of cleaning before they’re encouraged to start up there.
“There’s a big investment which is needed certainly on that site.”
Emily Spicer, SHDC’s place manager, responded. “There was a review a year or so ago and there were a number of processes that weren’t working in the place directorate.
“The review refined some of those processes and set out how we wanted to move forward in the future.
“The standards around the buildings is the reason why getting tenants to pay a small contribution towards the ground rent is crucial.”
Coun Bryan Alcock said: “It would be totally unfair to expect those contributions to underfund what needs putting right now.
“The authority has to put them in order. After that I accept it’s an effort to keep them up to date in the future.
“This service has been a Cinderella service and we’ve neglected it. That’s being polite. We do need to put it in order and right for a number of reasons.
“It’s totally unfair on the tenants to put up with the conditions on some of the sites. They’re not all like it but some are.
“The sooner as an authority we grasp the nettle and get on with it the better.”
Coun Rodney Grocock added: “The team have identified a heck of a lot of problems.
“Because there’s only about 50 units in South Holland it’s something that wasn’t given the priority it should have and I’ve been told officers are now working to get them back on track.”
