A COUNCIL which in February pledged to spend £250,000 a year to help regenerate a town centre, has still not employed a single person through the project.

The Eltham Regeneration Agency was proposed by Greenwich Council to help boost the local economy and reinvigorate the town's High Street.

Councillors said the town would receive £250,000 a year for four years to help tackle "specific challenges facing the retail sector".

But nearly six months later not a single person has been employed through the scheme and, unlike Greenwich and Woolwich, the town cannot fund jobs through the Government's Greenwich Waterfront regeneration programme.

Leader of Greenwich Conservatives, Councillor Spencer Drury, says the whole project was always designed as a "gimmick" to sway Eltham voters.

He said: "For no one to have been employed as part of the Eltham Regeneration Agency some five months after the funding was agreed reflects a lack of commitment to the idea of improving Eltham.

“At the time I feared that the creation of an Eltham Regeneration Agency was simply another gimmick to try and buy votes in Eltham rather than a serious attempt to address our problems and reinvigorate our High Street."

The council has also confirmed it offered the head of the Woolwich Regeneration Agency voluntary redundancy instead of switching him across to the Eltham agency.

The worker accepted the offer with a pay-off which the council has refused to reveal.

Cllr Drury added: "To make redundant the person in charge of another regeneration agency, who had experience and was already on the council’s payroll, when he could have been offered the Eltham role, suggests that there was simply no planning behind this scheme."

A spokesman for Greenwich Council said: "The Eltham Regeneration Agency is in the process of being set up and the initial board meeting of the new agency is planned for September.

"It is intended that initial staffing for the agency will include a co-ordinator and project worker and it is anticipated that staff will be in post later this year."

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