Too Late for Horton Chapel?

When the council agreed to hold a public meeting in June to discuss the future of Horton Chapel, they were persuaded to repeat the exercise before Christmas to advise local residents what progress had been made.

However, discussion by local councillors on the future of the Chapel has once again been postponed. A meeting of the Borough Council's Strategy & Resources committee on 29th September failed to reach the item before 10.30pm and agreed to defer to a future meeting. Confusingly, the minutes of the meeting state that the proposals have been agreed in principle. A member of the public who wished to talk to the committee about the Chapel had got fed up with waiting and gone home.

Cllr David Buxton is concerned at the lack of action since the June meeting and fears that residents who are keen to form a group to manage the building as a community facility will lose interest if the council continues to procrastinate. He met with the Chief Executive the following day to discuss the creation of a Community Development Trust.

He says "Proposals contained in a council report included '.....appointing someone to advise on the feasibility of .....' which all sounds far too woolly. We need a project manager to coordinate the project and work toward getting the building back into a state it can be used. Only this week, the papers have told us about The Little Group school for autistic children, which urgently needs a home. Whether or not Horton Chapel is suitable for this group doesn't matter, but the situation demonstrates that there are a number of possible uses for this building. There's a good pot of money to renovate it, but it seems we are going absolutely nowhere at the moment".

The future of Horton Chapel could be discussed at the next meeting of the Strategy & Resources Committee which is on 10th November, but that won't leave time for the second public meeting this side of Christmas.