THE rebuilding of a historic paddling pool and help for a lifeboat museum are among the projects being boosted by grants for seaside towns totalling £200,000.

The money is part of a Government strategy to help seaside areas across the country flourish by creating new jobs, improving local housing and restoring iconic structures like piers.

The Seaside Towns Grant initiative involves £5m divided between councils covering coastal areas – and Wirral’s £200,000 share is to be spent on New Brighton and Hoylake.

Public meetings were held in the towns, during which a series of proposals were voted on.

Council leader Jeff Green said: “People were able, I think, to make informed choices about what they going to achieve.”

He said some lessons could be learned from the way the grants were distributed, but added: “I think it was a really successful process.”

In Hoylake, the “Festival of Firsts” scored most highly. The project is a festival of arts to be held in Hoylake over the weekend of July 8 to 10.

This funding has now been approved by the council’s ruling cabinet and the event, which includes a musical and poetry proms, art exhibition, and outdoor plays will receive £5,000 to support the necessary start-up costs and promotional material.

The second most popular plan in the Hoylake meeting was to develop the former RNLI lifeboat station into a public museum about the lifeboat service, which will receive £30,000.

The Wirral Sailing Centre project development officer will receive £17,500 to “explore and develop a vision for the wider use of the Sailing Centre, with the aim of developing local skills”.

And the £16,610 grant to the Friends of Grove Park will be used for “enhanced recreational facilities” including replacing swings, and multi-play equipment, while £30,890 to Friends of Hoylake and Meols in Bloom is intended for improvements to Meols Parade Gardens, as well as providing on- site training and work experience for young people wanting to follow a career in horticulture, landscape gardening or construction.

In New Brighton, the highest scoring project was from Wellington Road Conservation Area Society, who will receive £10,650 to bring back into use the tidal pool on New Brighton beach, at the bottom of Victoria Road, as a paddling pool and small boating pool.

A total of £16,000 will go to the business association RESORT, to develop a summer programme of events for New Brighton, with seaside street entertainment such as Punch and Judy, face painting, and stilt walking, and £9,000 to create a dedicated website for the town aimed at potential visitors or existing residents.

Wallasey Yacht Club will be given £16,012 to promote New Brighton as a key venue for water sports and leisure, and £10,560 will go towards environmental improvements to Victoria Road and streets around it.

The largest share will go to New Brighton Community Partnership, who are set to receive £37,778 to create a “heritage and information centre” on Victoria Road.

A report by Wirral’s interim director of corporate services, Kevin Adderley, said: “A number of projects did not receive sufficient support for funding on this occasion.

“These included a number of innovative tourism-related ideas.

“It is intended that officers will work further with the applicants to ensure that these ideas are considered as part of the planning for the Women’s Open Golf Championship in 2012, and for the return of the Open Golf Championship in 2014.”