Race to the door
As the Life Factory saga continues, more information has come to light along with a new resignation. And two other projects in the Glastonbury Town Deal are graded as "red risk".
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The saga continues to unfold
As the saga of the Life Factory in Glastonbury continues to unfold, the rush to the door has left one of the companies involved without any directors.
The Life Factory was a project intended to create new space in one of the buildings next to the Red Brick Building on the industrial estate of old factories at Beckery, on the west edge of Glastonbury. Described as a: “a space for innovation, enterprise and creativity” and including a new studio for local radio station GWS, if completed as intended this could and should have been a landmark development for the town of Glastonbury.
The project was offered £2.8m out of the total £23.6m of funding given to Glastonbury under the Conservative Government’s Town Deal Fund scheme. However, and crucially, the money for the Life Factory was meant to be match funded.
The organisations involved
The Red Brick Building was meant to manage the project and one of the first things they did was set up a subsidiary company called Beckery Construction Limited.
Because the town deal money was awarded to The Red Brick Building (strictly The Red Brick Building Centre Limited), it was essential that any subsidiary company set up should be bound by the same terms and conditions as The Red Brick Building. More of that in a moment.
As we reported on 29 May (see here Lifeless Factory) the money for the Town Deal Fund was held by Somerset Council who had the task of administering payments.
Meanwhile the Glastonbury Town Deal Board was meant to supervise all of the projects and liaise with Somerset Council on the progress they were making and alert the council to any problems they became aware of.
It was clear to the Glastonbury Town Deal Board that there were significant problems with the Life Factory by the end of 2023.
When things were clearly going wrong at the Life Factory project, and way too late in the process (early in 2024), Somerset Council stopped making payments to the project. Unfortunately by then nearly all the money allocated to the project had been spent.