Frustration at lack of funding to back up Enfield Town Centre First plan

A sense of "fatigue, dissatisfaction and anger" was expressed by Councillor Ronan Moore in relation to the lack of funding for projects identified in the Enfield Town Centre First plan which aims to revitalise the town centre.

Four years ago, Enfield was one of 26 towns identified nationally to be awarded funding of €100,000 to develop a Town Centre First Plan aimed at tackling dereliction and revitatilising town centres. Consultants Paul Hogarth and Company were appointed to oversee the tplan for Enfield and undertook extensive public consultation with the local community.

A key part of the Town Centre First programme was the formation of a Town Team with a wide variety of representatives from local groups, businesses, stakeholders and public representatives. The first meeting of Enfield's Town Team took place in June 2023.

However, there has been frustration at the lack of funding forthcoming to implement projects identified as part of the Town Centre First Plan, despite huge buy-in during the public consultation process.

At Friday's meeting of Trim MD, Cllr Ronan Moore and Cllr Padraig Coffey- who are both on the Town Team - expressed frustration at the lack of action and funding since the plan was adopted.

"There was a huge amount of representation and huge buy-in by the community in a town that hadn't had this opportunity before and people really put all their effort in, " said Cllr Moore.

"It was facilitated by both the council and consultants and the reps and community members lived up to their responsibilities, and came up with a plan but funding has just been lacking," he said.

"You have people wondering, why have we put all this energy, effort and time in when what has come from it seems to be very insignificant."

He said apart from the community hall project which had been pushed for long before by the community group and backed by the council, very little has come from it. "I think there needs to be frank conversation taking place," he said.

Cllr Padraig Coffey agreed and said either the council would have to pick up the mantle and say this is what we are going to do, or else disband the town team and it would go back to councillors asking for this or for that and see we can get.

"We are going to meetings monthly, taking time out to try and address this and are we going anywhere with it," he asked.

He spoke of long running issues around lack of parking with many of the spaces being taken up by commuters accessing public transport from Enfield.

"If you walk around the village, there is nowhere in it to park because its a town for logistics- for people to get a bus, get a train. We have 69 stops and pick ups by every day by bus companies. There are not too many villages in Ireland that has that. And ten train journeys in and ten journeys out," said Cllr Coffey.

At the same time, he said they have a parking issue where elderly people can't use their village and the challenge was trying to integrate the two.

"The population is at 4,200, we are only 800 off the 5,000 to get us into a town zone situation," he added.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme