On 20 March we move into Purdah and campaigning for local elections, writes Cllr Liz Maddison. I hope you have enjoyed these regular updates and my final newsletter is provided today until after the May elections.
As advised previously, some of this year’s Member Neighbourhood funding has been used to book and pay for another Circus event in the market area of Festival Walk.
This is booked for Saturday, 24 May with some acts already booked. This will be followed in July by the popular Big Brass Bash, to be held on a Thursday evening, again in the market area.
The Government have now released their blueprint for the Long Term Plan for Towns and allocation of £20m to 75 towns including Spennymoor. New Neighbourhood Boards will be established. The new launch advises that “A 10 year Regeneration Plan for their area will be identified by the Boards, who will identify the activity needed to achieve the three strategic objectives of the programme that are identified as: thriving places; stronger communities and taking back control.
“By making.progress on each of these objectives, local areas will drive forward the Government’s long term missions.”
We made huge progress on identifying and working on projects highlighted by the local community, including ourselves, last year and are ready to meet these new objectives on top of the previous ones identified to drive your ambitions forward.
Work is delayed on the Cheapside area of Festival Walk due to a damaged sewer pipe and live NPG cable being located.
The projected completion date is now estimated to be April.
The planned Signage work on Auckland Walk paid for with mine and Cllr Moloy’s Member funding is also due to complete in April. All that will remain to complete with Member funding allocation are the red road markings on Oxford Road, with other white lining also planned to complete prior to 1 May.
The Traffic Team have been asked to extend double yellow lines on Bishop’s Close Road to prevent vans parking on the drop kerb at the end of the new path on the old Library site. The future use of the Library site has been identified as a Priority Project for the Long Term Plan for Towns. The accumulated litter within the privately owned site in same location was requested to be removed as soon as possible.
Car Park surveys are to take place in April. Electric Charging points at the Leisure Centre have recently been upgraded with some work still required on road markings. More charges are to be installed at various other locations across the town once power provision is finalised and after agreement with the charge point partner.
Drainage work, reported some time ago to resolve flooding issues onto the road on Church Street, Byers Green is currently in progress.
I met with officers early January, along with Cllr McAloon, to look at identifying funding to enhance the rear area of Cheapside. I am pleased to say that Officers are now working on a suitable design for this project with the expectation that work will start immediately on completion of the Cheapside public realm, where seating and lighting provision has also been funded.
The planning application for 299 homes on Phase 6 Burton Woods, took place this week. I attended this committee and asked them to consider the many issues on this whole site where phases 1-5 are still to be adopted, and emerging issues should this site be approved.
The whole estate has been a continuous building site since first approved in March 2004 under the old Sedgefield Borough Local Plan and had been subject to 6 planning applications, 3 of which were approved after initial refusal, following an appeal from the Developer. This new site would add a further 299 homes and would result in the loss of more green open space with effects on local habitats and fauna and loss of prime agricultural land.
It is not in the County Durham Plan and would create still more extra pressures on local infrastructure where there is already a shortage of doctors, dentists and add to traffic and parking congestion in the town and within the site.
It had been recognised in the planning report that the development would conflict with the locational sustainability requirements of Policies 6, 10 and 21 of the County Durham Plan due to the distances from the centre of the development to the nearest amenities and services in the Town Centre – more than 800 metres from the site.
Consequently, the application was refused. The video of this meeting and representations made by myself and Cllr Molloy is available on the County Council’s website.
During the month, I have visited our local fire station along with Cllrs McAloon, Anderson, and Maddison (Clive) to keep up to date with their operations and services.
We attended the annual community car wash that they run for their charity, attended the Police & Communities Together meeting to learn of the operations in place to tackle our reported ASB issues, and completed another litter pick on the Auckland Walk where we were joined by young volunteers, Layton, Max and Esmae.
Although there is an election coming up, please be assured we will continue to report and resolve all local community issues that we identify.
County Councillor Liz Maddison, 5/3/25
Spennymoor's local community newspaper.
