A statement of payments by Goole Town Council in September 2023 show two significant payments to Steve Wells Associates - East Riding Council’s favoured consultancy firm appointed by Goole Town Council without a formal bidding process - for the Victoria Pleasure Grounds element of the Goole Town Deal scheme. A payment on 1st September was £88,082, while another payment on 28th September was £142,000 (see image for screen shot). Correspondents who have looked at the GTC statements tell me that including other payments, Steve Wells Associated have received some £288,000 for their work on the Victoria Pleasure Grounds scheme.

Given that the VPG is just one project, if that rate of payment were repeated across all the projects, in excess of £2 million of the 25 million Town Deal Fund allocated to Goole will have been spent on consultancy fees before anything is actually done to benefit the citizens of Goole. The plans which have been presented to the public suggest they have been developed by people who don’t understand the town, don’t know what the citizens of the town want, and haven’t made much effort to find out. Perhaps because they don’t care - they don’t live in Goole and don’t have to live with the consequences. Which raises the question of whether the money spent on consultancy fees is money well spent.

Correspondents have also pointed out that a November Goole Town Council meeting was informed of delays to many projects, but that information does not feature on the Goole Town Deal Board’s sales pitch website. 

See the links below (the quotes with the urls are from the correspondents who sent the links):

“the GTC minutes from the P&R committee show that there have been numerous delays to the projects...” https://goole-tc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PR-Minutes-Nov-23-2.pdf

“the recent update on the GTD website ... makes no mention of any delays, and why is that?” https://www.gooletowndeal.co.uk/progress-on-the-goole-town-deal-%E2%80%A8programme-set-to-gather-pace-in-2024/#:~:text=Goole%20Town%20Deal%20set%20to%20gather%20pace%20in%202024%20%7C%20Goole%20Town%20Deal&text=With%20the%20end%20of%20the,stimulate%20long%2Dterm%20economic%20growth