Agenda item

Statements by the Leader and Members of the Executive had been circulated with the agenda.

Councillor C J Davie, Executive Director for Economic Development, Environment, Planning and Tourism was pleased to announce that an additional investment to the On Lincolnshire programme had been agreed which aimed to bring super-fast broadband to Lincolnshire.  The £510,000 investment from the County Council had levered in £684,000 from BT and £1.6m from the ERDF, which made a total of £2.794m.  This would improve broadband for an additional 5799 premises within the county. 

The programme was going very well and extra fibre optic spines were being laid across the county.  It was hoped that a further 14,000 premises would be upgraded and live by the end of January 2014.  The government had also started to engage with the authority in relation to funding for the 10% hardest to reach. 

Councillor C N Worth, Executive Councillor for Libraries, Heritage, Culture, Registration and Coroners Service was pleased to announce that following a rigorous assessment which included on-site inspections, the Collection, Museum of Lincolnshire Life, Discover Stamford and Gainsborough Old Hall had all received full museum accreditation.  This meant that they had national standards to perform to and was a demonstration of good practice.  However, it was also a pre-condition for future lottery funding applications.  The Executive Councillor paid tribute to Mark McCree, the Collections Access Management, and his team for all the work which had been put into achieving this.