Bolton

Bolton Council missed a £16m funding deadline because of an ’email that was too big’

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 15th December 2021

Bolton Council missed a deadline for the £16m Levelling Up Fund bidding process because of an email that was too large.

It’s been reported by the BBC that Bolton Council missed the application deadline because its ‘submission had been too large to be received by the government’s server’.

The council had intended to apply for funding for Bolton’s Crompton Place scheme, which will create an ‘improved retail and dining experience’ near the Town Hall.

The deadline was June 18, but council bosses blamed ‘technical issues’ for missing it.

Labour has accused Bolton Council of ‘dropping the ball’.

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In a meeting on Monday, Bolton’s director of place Gerry Brough said: “Two bids were being simultaneously submitted.

Credit: BCEGI Construction

“Both bids involved collating many separate documents and third party letters of support and unfortunately we did not receive all necessary signed documents until that morning.

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“At the point of submission, it became apparent that file size limitations on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government server meant that both bids had to be broken down into four separate parts, so they could be attached to four separate emails.

“The medical college bid was submitted first and in full before the noon deadline [but] the Crompton Place bid could not be submitted in full before the deadline.”

Read more: Manchester bus drivers surprised with giant ‘thank you’ Christmas tree

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He said that no indication was given that the bid was unacceptable and that the missed deadline wasn’t highlighted as an issue until October.

Labour councillor Nick Peel said: “Had I not pursued this, the public of Bolton would have been kept completely in the dark.

“These are not the actions of an open and transparent council.

“The fact is that the council did drop the ball [and] it is quite frankly a very costly mess.”

Featured Image – BCEGI Construction

Bolton

Greater Manchester clubs and Kellogg’s team up for free kids’ football camps this summer

Danny Jones Danny Jones Kellogg's free summer football camps in Greater Manchester 2024

A whole host of Greater Manchester clubs are teaming up with cereal brand Kellogg’s this summer to hold tens of thousands of free football camps for kids this summer.

Joining the nationwide initiative alongside dozens of other teams across the country, local sides including Manchester City, Bolton Wanderers, Salford City and more will be taking part in a glorious sporting summer helping the opportunity to stay active and entertained during the holidays.

Kellogg’s Football Camps and similar schemes from the company have been running for many years and this latest edition is set to be the biggest yet, with 300,000 completely free days of footballing fun set to be offered out to children aged 5-14 all over the UK.

With the multiple clubs from in and around the region enlisting their help, not to mention Euro 2024 and the Olympics just on the horizon, it’s going to be a great couple of months for the little ones.

With the likes of Stockport County, Wigan Athletic and other nearby organisations such as the Foundation 92 (the educational charity arm formed by the Man United’s Class of ’92 group) getting involved, the physical activity-driven programme will be a great outlet for kids this school break.

This fresh push for physical activity comes after recent research found that 90% of parents in the North West would like their child to experience less screen time and take part in more outdoor activities and 7/10 of mums and dads from the region feel there aren’t enough accessible activities local to them.

Entry for the Kellogg’s camps kicked off this month and will run until 24 June, with around 2,500 places released every week. The sessions themselves will run throughout July and August 2024 as well as a handful in June and September.

To mark the occasion this year, they also revealed the world’s longest football scarf featuring a total of 74 different teams from England, Wales, and Scotland, measuring approximately 100m long.

Half-and-half scarves can still do one but this is pretty ace, right?

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The vast majority of parents polled said they felt participating in team sports can help build crucial life skills and that’s exactly what the campaign is hoping to achieve. Brilliant stuff.

Kellogg’s has long held not only a local connection to Greater Manchester but a partnership with English football in general (if you have one of those old footy cereal bowls you know all too well), so it’s nice to see them still getting involved and help parents keep their kids occupied for a little while this summer.

The sign-up process is pretty simple: merely grab a promotional box of the brand’s cereal which millions of British kids already eat for their cereal, scan the barcode to validate the purchase and then select your desired club via email to book your kids onto the free football days. You can see the T&Cs HERE.

As it happens, they aren’t the only food brand offering similar sporting freebies this year:

McDonald’s set to deliver free football coaching to thousands of Greater Manchester kids

Featured Images — Supplied/Bolton Wanders FC (via X)

Bolton

Viewers react to discovering new TV drama A Gentleman in Moscow was actually filmed in Bolton

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant

Viewers are just discovering that the new TV drama series, A Gentleman in Moscow, was actually filmed in… Bolton.

That’s right, whether you can believe it or not – and much to the shock of local residents, too – the Greater Manchester town had itself a bit of a Stalin era-themed makeover last year, and served as the perfect place to recreate the Russian capital city for a brand-new TV drama miniseries starring Ewan McGregor.

Based on the bestselling 2016 novel of the same name by Amor Towles, the new series titled A Gentleman in Moscow has now started airing on streaming platform Paramount+ in the UK.

Over the course of the gripping eight-part series, it tells the story of aristocrat Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, played by McGregor, who has recently returned to Russia from Paris, and spends decades banished to an attic hotel room following the October Revolution after being sentenced to house arrest by a Bolshevik tribunal.

But, despite the very-Russian theme running through the show – which also stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Fehinti Balogun, Daniel Cerqueria, Johnny Harris, Leah Harvey, and more – production crews never actually ventured to Moscow to film.

Instead, they chose several locations across northern England, and one of those locations was, none other than, Bolton.

Filming began in Victoria Square outside Bolton Town Hall on 27 February 2023, with the Town Hall itself appearing a handful of times throughout the show’s first episode, and took place into March, before returning again in April 2023.

Viewers have been reacting to discovering that the new TV drama, A Gentleman in Moscow, was actually filmed in Bolton / Credit: Showtime & Paramount TV

As well as Bolton, Liverpool Town Hall was used as a filming location in June 2023, and filming also took place in Halifax and Leeds Civic Hall too.

Eagle-eyed viewers who tuned into the first episode of the show and spotted Bolton Town Hall in all its glory were quick to head on over to social media to share their reactions – and disbelief, mostly – that the Greater Manchester town had an unexpected starring role.

One fan wrote on X: “Very bizarre moment for me. I’m from northwest England, but live in Moscow. I’m watching the new TV series ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’, couldn’t help but notice that it had been filmed in Bolton…”

“Learnt that A Gentleman in Moscow was filmed in Bolton yesterday and my interest shot way up. How did they pull that off?,” another viewer commented.

A third pointed out that Bolton has actually doubled as Russia before.

“It’s been used before for same purpose,” they wrote on X, “In the late 80s when I was in my teens, we went shopping to Bolton, and there was a giant portrait of Stalin hanging from the front of the town hall. My mum thought there had been a Militant takeover on the Council.”

Others were also quick to add that Bolton has been a popular filming location for movies and TV shows for the past couple of decades.

Peaky Blinders, Happy Valley, Red Rose, Traces, The Reckoning, and Brassic are just some of the smash-hit shows having been filmed in the town in recent years.

One viewer wrote: “When I first visited Bolton in the early 90s, I was told the Town Hall often stood in for European Government buildings in films. No need to change a good thing”, while another commented that they “thought it looked familiar”.

Read more:

You can watch A Gentleman in Moscow streaming now on Paramount+ in the UK.

Featured Image – Showtime & Paramount TV

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