£175,632 has been awarded to the City of Lincoln Council in partnership with Lincoln BIG and Visit Lincoln.
The grant was part of the Government’s Welcome Back Fund. This funding provides cities across England with £56 million, to support safe return to high streets after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The money will be used to conduct a clean-up of the city.
Some of the improvements include a deep clean of the pavements on the high street, restoring benches, putting up anti-littering posters, replanting flower beds and designing new signage throughout the city centre.
The funding will also be used to host a free high-profile event in 2022. More information on this event will be announced next year.
Lincoln BIG Operations Manager Lee Roberts spoke to LSJ News, “The work we have done so far has already benefitted the city by targeting the hot spots that needed cleaning and beginning to put the new signage around the city.”
The City of Lincoln Council and Lincoln BIG have worked closely to prioritise the funding to areas that need the most development.
“Overall, the funding will benefit the city, making it more welcoming for people and letting them know the city is safer in terms of COVID.” Lee said.
K.Fines is a jewellery business in Lincoln’s city centre owned by Emma Morehouse.
Improvements to the city centre aim to increase tourism and boost the local economy after post-pandemic.
“Hopefully this will bring more people to Lincoln as a shopping destination. I don’t think people realise that there has been a lot of work done in the past few years and you can actually spend a day or two just shopping alone.” Emma said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, small business have been directly affected by the lack of custom, because of various lockdown implications.
“Due to COVID our business didn’t have an opening launch, this massively concerned us as people didn’t know we existed. We are only just starting to see a rise in customers coming into the shop.” Emma told LSJ News.
To find out more about upcoming events in Lincoln, head to the Visit Lincoln website.
