Cash-strapped Northamptonshire County Council to fund Roman site

The Chester Farm site includes an Iron Age settlement and Roman town as well as the fire-gutted house

An extra £2.2m has been earmarked by a cash-strapped council for a Roman heritage project.

Northamptonshire County Council has decided to put additional funding into the Chester Farm heritage centre.

Labour's Winston Strachan said the money would be better spent to "fill the holes in the county's crumbling roads".

Cabinet member for the environment, Ian Morris, said the project was of "huge archaeological importance".

Five years ago the council pledged £4.9m to the project after being awarded just under £4m in Heritage Lottery funding.

The 45-acre farm site, in Irchester, was bought by the council in 2004 and the heritage project started in 2013. It was due to open in March.

The council had planned to secure the extra £2.2m needed to complete the project from other agencies, but the plans have not been realised.

'Repair potholes'

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the 17th Century farmhouse was built on the site of a Roman walled town with human activity dating back 10,000 years.

When complete it will include a cafe, community venue, offices and classrooms for school visits.

Speaking at the authority's cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr Strachan, who represents the Castle ward in Northampton, said: "Why are we continuing to fund the Chester Farm project when we could use some of that money to repair potholes?"

Mr Morris, Conservative, said the council would lose the lottery funding if it pulled out of the project.

The county council only managed to balance its books at the end of the 2017/18 financial year by imposing a spending ban and using more than £12m of reserves.

It has also approved almost £40m of cuts for next year's budget.

Secretary of State for Local Government, Sajid Javid, is poised to send commissioners to take over the authority after a report recommended it should be scrapped.