Trust Life: Grass at the Welfare and parking nightmares
Welcome once again to life at the Trust. As I look outside from the office window there is the promise of another lovely warm sunny day ahead.
In the last edition we were halfway through the Puffin Festival: now after having a brief rest, we are beginning to review what was successful and what wasn’t: what worked and what didn’t – all in preparation for the decision making of whether we will repeat the festival.
At the time of writing our thoughts (based on comments received) are that we probably will host another event next year, but perhaps for a shorter period.
However before that we need to begin organising the Torchlight Procession – planning will begin soon, so if you have any ideas to put forward please let us know or better still come along to one of the meetings, which will be advertised when a date is set. I know it is hard to think about Christmas when the sun is shining, but planning has to begin early!
Welfare: I know quite a few of you have concerns about the state of the grass at the welfare, concerns I have tried to allay. While we have concentrated on the football pitch and trying to keep it fit for playing, the main areas have unfortunately got the better of us.
If I can explain the reason: Income from the football teams has been used to pay a contractor to cut the grass. Sadly the contractor closed his business and because the money available was tight, we have been unable to attract anyone else willing to cut it for the same amount. After negotiating with the Town Council it was agreed we would pay their worker to cut the pitch area, but it could only be when it was needed, for two reasons: a) it had to fit into their other work schedule and b) they only have a small grass cutter, so would take too long to cut the whole area.
That said, we are trying to resolve how we can work together to ensure we don’t encounter this problem in the future. In the meantime I have asked NCC if they can cut the grass (as a one off) prior to the school holidays. Again this has to be scheduled into their work programme so please bear with us.
Parking: we all know what the town is like when it comes to high days and holidays and parking is a major headache. While a solution has been agreed for Queen Street, there are other issues to address, particularly around the harbour.
This is something we are looking at with the Town Council and County Highways. Studies have been carried out in the past with various options offered. We are hoping to revisit them to see if a solution already exists – no point in reinventing the wheel, if you’ll pardon the pun! Hopefully we will be able to update you in the near future.
On regeneration matters: The Expression of Interest submitted to the Coastal Communities Fund was successful so we are frantically working up the full proposal to have everything required in place for the October submission deadline. So there is still a lot of work to do and then another waiting game as the results will not be announced until January 2014. It’s a long process and we will be in competition with many other hopeful organisations, so we will do our best and keep our fingers crossed.
Enjoy the sunshine.
Julia Aston, Director, Amble Development Trust
julia@ambledevelopmenttrust.org.uk
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