Saved you a click; local museum gets money from local council to fill in pot holes, slow news day/ intern training at daily mail leads to this article.
Edit; can’t tell which ones are the daily mail accounts and which ones are the simpletons
When the Government announced its £4.8billion Levelling Up Fund to support left-behind communities, few could have predicted quite how literally one claimant would take it.
Nor would they have thought that an aristocrat would end up benefiting from money pot. For some £330,000 was spent making a bumpy driveway owned by the 8th Viscount Gage level once more.
A close friend of Prince Philip, Lord Gage, 87, was dubbed the Virile Viscount after fathering a child at 75 with his third wife, Alexandra Templeton, who is 38 years his junior.
Now the Eton and Oxford-educated former Tory peer has questions to answer over why the vast sum of taxpayers’ money was spent filling in over half a mile of potholes on his land in East Sussex.
The track leads to Charleston Farmhouse, an independently run museum and art gallery within the grounds of his Firle Estate. The museum applied for the funds, even though the drive itself is owned by the millionaire aristocrat.
Visitors to the former home of Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister, had complained for years about the potholes. One warned in a review: ‘You risk your car’s suspension – and you need to wear a sports bra.’
But despite the viscount’s wealth being estimated at £15million, his Firle Estate Management team helped the Charleston Trust secure the cash from the Getting Building Fund, part of the Levelling Up Fund specifically aimed at helping Covid-hit infrastructure.
The Trust blamed ‘poor drainage’ for corroding the driveway to obtain the grant.
The track is over a mile from Lord Gage’s £10million Tudor manor Firle Place, but it is not just museum tourists who drive on it.
Agricultural vehicles serving one of the viscount’s seven farms use it, as well as locals living in some of the 114 houses he owns in five villages dotted across 7,500 acres of the Sussex Downs.
The walls of Lord Gage’s mansion, used to film Jonathan Creek, are adorned with paintings by Van Dyck and Gainsborough. In 1999 he sold a 16th century masterpiece by Fra Bartolomeo for £14.5million. The house is open to the public in summer.
The estate, which also boasts two pubs and one of Britain’s oldest cricket greens, has been in the family since Sir John Gage, executor of Henry VIII’s will, built Firle Place in the late 15th century.
Critics suggested restoring country estate driveways was not what the public envisioned when Boris Johnson announced the Getting Building Fund to show his administration was ‘putting its arms around people at a time of crisis’.
‘Taxpayers will be outraged how their hard-earned cash is being spent,’ Harry Fone, grassroots campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said. ‘Ministers need to ensure the public get real value for money.’
Lord Gage, who has household staff including a butler, inherited his title in 1993 and sat as a hereditary lord until his peerage was abolished under the House of Lords Act 1999. Bob Baines, estate director at Firle Estate, said: ‘The Firle Estate sold Charleston to an independent charity formed in 1980.
‘The access track had remained functional for farm traffic and cottages but was unsuitable for Charleston’s visitors travelling in the average family car.
‘Charleston successfully applied to the Getting Building Fund to rebuild the track to improve access for visitors, create job opportunities, and support the recovery and growth of the region’s visitor economy.
‘The southern extent of the new track beyond Charleston that services the dairy farm and Estate cottages was funded by Firle Estate.’
The Charleston Trust said: ‘Our charity is grateful to South East Local Enterprise Partnership and the Government’s Getting Building Fund for providing the funding needed to rebuild the severely damaged access track.
‘The new road provides safer, easier, and greener ways for visitors to reach Charleston and will help support the recovery and growth of the region’s creative and visitor economy.’
The South East Local Enterprise Partnership, through which the grant application was made, said the fund has created 11 new jobs and ‘helped to boost the local creative and cultural sector’.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: ‘Charleston is internationally recognised as a site of cultural importance and this funding will help open it up to more visitors and improve its contribution to the local economy.’
I simply can’t believe that a rich person would obtain financial assistance using public money. It’s unheard of.
Oh no ex Tory is using public money to fix his private assets *shocked pikachu face*
If it literally was his personal driveway, that would of course be appalling. However, it is not his driveway. It is a road open to the public, used daily by locals, that happens to be on his land. It is still a dubious use of the fund, but it is not as egregious as the title would suggest.
Note that the Viscount did fund the repairs to the section of the road that serves only his farm, i.e. which the public don’t have a use for. The fund only was used for the parts of the track used by the public. In other words, the public funds were used to repair the damage caused by public use. Whether that’s fair or not is something to discuss.
*Edit:* I will suck up the downvotes but please remember reddiquette: downvotes are for comments that do not add to the discussion, not for expressing disagreement. If you think my comment is not relevant to the thread, you are welcome to downvote, but an explanation would be appreciated. If you don’t agree with it, however, the downvote button is not the mechanism to express that.
Yes but Jeremy Corbyn,. Yes but Brexit, yes but immigrants in boat’s trying to steel my fruit picking job.
Never mind that, he sold a painting for £14.5m but is now only worth £15m, and he lives poor? Maybe HMRC should chase him up instead of hiking my income tax £300 per month
Yet people begrudge benefit claimants.. this guy has just claimed more in one fell swoop than many do in a lifetime.
They’re taking the piss.
Its fucking duck islands all over again.
This isn’t a major tourist attraction, never heard of it.
The Levelling Up fund seems to be working as intended then.
I think the scandal should be more that his MP signed off on it, as is the case with all Leveling Up funding.
Anyone can chance it with the funding requests, it is the MP that is accountable for whether it gets agreement.
£330k? For a driveway?!?! He should try to negotiate a Viscount.
I’d email my Tory MP to complain but he will either ignore me or make up some bollocks excuse
I love how he keeps being given this cap-doffing, forelock-tugging “saucy” nickname when if someone managed 1% of the Posho Driveway Fund in benefit fraud they’d be a “feckless scroungers”.
14 comments
Saved you a click; local museum gets money from local council to fill in pot holes, slow news day/ intern training at daily mail leads to this article.
Edit; can’t tell which ones are the daily mail accounts and which ones are the simpletons
When the Government announced its £4.8billion Levelling Up Fund to support left-behind communities, few could have predicted quite how literally one claimant would take it.
Nor would they have thought that an aristocrat would end up benefiting from money pot. For some £330,000 was spent making a bumpy driveway owned by the 8th Viscount Gage level once more.
A close friend of Prince Philip, Lord Gage, 87, was dubbed the Virile Viscount after fathering a child at 75 with his third wife, Alexandra Templeton, who is 38 years his junior.
Now the Eton and Oxford-educated former Tory peer has questions to answer over why the vast sum of taxpayers’ money was spent filling in over half a mile of potholes on his land in East Sussex.
The track leads to Charleston Farmhouse, an independently run museum and art gallery within the grounds of his Firle Estate. The museum applied for the funds, even though the drive itself is owned by the millionaire aristocrat.
Visitors to the former home of Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister, had complained for years about the potholes. One warned in a review: ‘You risk your car’s suspension – and you need to wear a sports bra.’
But despite the viscount’s wealth being estimated at £15million, his Firle Estate Management team helped the Charleston Trust secure the cash from the Getting Building Fund, part of the Levelling Up Fund specifically aimed at helping Covid-hit infrastructure.
The Trust blamed ‘poor drainage’ for corroding the driveway to obtain the grant.
The track is over a mile from Lord Gage’s £10million Tudor manor Firle Place, but it is not just museum tourists who drive on it.
Agricultural vehicles serving one of the viscount’s seven farms use it, as well as locals living in some of the 114 houses he owns in five villages dotted across 7,500 acres of the Sussex Downs.
The walls of Lord Gage’s mansion, used to film Jonathan Creek, are adorned with paintings by Van Dyck and Gainsborough. In 1999 he sold a 16th century masterpiece by Fra Bartolomeo for £14.5million. The house is open to the public in summer.
The estate, which also boasts two pubs and one of Britain’s oldest cricket greens, has been in the family since Sir John Gage, executor of Henry VIII’s will, built Firle Place in the late 15th century.
Critics suggested restoring country estate driveways was not what the public envisioned when Boris Johnson announced the Getting Building Fund to show his administration was ‘putting its arms around people at a time of crisis’.
‘Taxpayers will be outraged how their hard-earned cash is being spent,’ Harry Fone, grassroots campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said. ‘Ministers need to ensure the public get real value for money.’
Lord Gage, who has household staff including a butler, inherited his title in 1993 and sat as a hereditary lord until his peerage was abolished under the House of Lords Act 1999. Bob Baines, estate director at Firle Estate, said: ‘The Firle Estate sold Charleston to an independent charity formed in 1980.
‘The access track had remained functional for farm traffic and cottages but was unsuitable for Charleston’s visitors travelling in the average family car.
‘Charleston successfully applied to the Getting Building Fund to rebuild the track to improve access for visitors, create job opportunities, and support the recovery and growth of the region’s visitor economy.
‘The southern extent of the new track beyond Charleston that services the dairy farm and Estate cottages was funded by Firle Estate.’
The Charleston Trust said: ‘Our charity is grateful to South East Local Enterprise Partnership and the Government’s Getting Building Fund for providing the funding needed to rebuild the severely damaged access track.
‘The new road provides safer, easier, and greener ways for visitors to reach Charleston and will help support the recovery and growth of the region’s creative and visitor economy.’
The South East Local Enterprise Partnership, through which the grant application was made, said the fund has created 11 new jobs and ‘helped to boost the local creative and cultural sector’.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: ‘Charleston is internationally recognised as a site of cultural importance and this funding will help open it up to more visitors and improve its contribution to the local economy.’
I simply can’t believe that a rich person would obtain financial assistance using public money. It’s unheard of.
Oh no ex Tory is using public money to fix his private assets *shocked pikachu face*
If it literally was his personal driveway, that would of course be appalling. However, it is not his driveway. It is a road open to the public, used daily by locals, that happens to be on his land. It is still a dubious use of the fund, but it is not as egregious as the title would suggest.
Note that the Viscount did fund the repairs to the section of the road that serves only his farm, i.e. which the public don’t have a use for. The fund only was used for the parts of the track used by the public. In other words, the public funds were used to repair the damage caused by public use. Whether that’s fair or not is something to discuss.
*Edit:* I will suck up the downvotes but please remember reddiquette: downvotes are for comments that do not add to the discussion, not for expressing disagreement. If you think my comment is not relevant to the thread, you are welcome to downvote, but an explanation would be appreciated. If you don’t agree with it, however, the downvote button is not the mechanism to express that.
Yes but Jeremy Corbyn,. Yes but Brexit, yes but immigrants in boat’s trying to steel my fruit picking job.
Never mind that, he sold a painting for £14.5m but is now only worth £15m, and he lives poor? Maybe HMRC should chase him up instead of hiking my income tax £300 per month
Yet people begrudge benefit claimants.. this guy has just claimed more in one fell swoop than many do in a lifetime.
They’re taking the piss.
Its fucking duck islands all over again.
This isn’t a major tourist attraction, never heard of it.
The Levelling Up fund seems to be working as intended then.
I think the scandal should be more that his MP signed off on it, as is the case with all Leveling Up funding.
Anyone can chance it with the funding requests, it is the MP that is accountable for whether it gets agreement.
£330k? For a driveway?!?! He should try to negotiate a Viscount.
I’d email my Tory MP to complain but he will either ignore me or make up some bollocks excuse
I love how he keeps being given this cap-doffing, forelock-tugging “saucy” nickname when if someone managed 1% of the Posho Driveway Fund in benefit fraud they’d be a “feckless scroungers”.
This country is unwell.