We are pushing the owners to improve the look of the Mercia side of the site where Asda is. The landscaping has almost disappeared in many places and the crossing markings are barely visible. The whole area is looking a bit of tired mess now and needs some TLC.

Yet again I chased up all the relevant parties this week, speaking to and emailing BT Openreach, the Council, Northern Powergrid and the Arnison Centre owners and indirectly, their Lawyers.

In short, the current hold up has been between Arnison centre lawyers and NPG.

Having spoken to NPG today they have returned documents which once signed by either the lawyers or the Arnison Centre owners will allow Northern Powergrid to come on site and dig the trench to supply electric to the Broadband box.

I chased up the Arnison Centre owners today to ask them to push their lawyers to respond quickly.

Once they have signed and returned to NPG the docs, NPG will book in the work, which could be anything from 4-8 weeks before NPG are on site due to Christmas holidays etc and they can’t start earlier because we have now reached the busiest period for the Arnison Centre and the disruption to the HGV access and bus gate is not allowed.

Unfortunately, in addition a small part of the area to dig up is public highway so that needs approving via the council which is something else we are going to chase up.

From NPG completing the works, Openreach have now confirmed to me that it would only take them 2 weeks to have the box fully active.

So best case scenario is now February for go live.

Needless to say I’m not holding out much hope of that given all the previous promises from so many parties, but given we would probably be still be at least a year away from getting this sorted if we hadn’t been intervening, a few more months wait is better than the alternative.

We will continue to chase everyone we need to right through to a successful conclusion.

So now we wait to see how long the Arnison Centre and their Lawyers take to sign the docs and return them to NPG.

The clock is once again ticking………

As many will have seen, the construction of the new footpath and cycleway we secured along the Framwellgate moor/Pity Me bypass is well under way. It occurred to us that if the work was extended into Pity Me, the long overdue improvement to the village could take place and be done cheaper.

We asked the council if they would pay for this and they refused, so we asked if they would contribute to the costs if we used local neighbourhood budgets towards it but they also refused.

Finally after repeated requests we got a price for the works which will save over £12,000 compared to this work being done separate to the Bypass works. So the 110m stretch of path from the roundabout to Potterhouse Terrace will now be resurfaced and rebuilt. The only bit not being done is the stepped area in front of the pub which we hope the Council will look to fund in the future.

We continue to be committed to improving the other side of the road too where the grassed area is in need of verge hardening as due to the lack of parking space, there is frequent parking. We are also working on improvements in other areas including on Framwellgate Moor Front Street.

Just when we thought we were getting somewhere with the broadband issue for the estate, along comes another blockage. We’ve had to battle to get a box installed for the equipment, then battle to get BT to agree to get the electric to it installed, and now there is a dispute over a licence to dig up and install the electricity supply to the box. This is apparently currently somewhere between the lawyers of the Arnison Centre and BT/Northern Powergrid. The Council and ourselves are pushing hard now to get this final hurdle dealt with. It sometimes feels as though someone hidden from view is deliberately seeking to stop residents getting a decent broadband supply. Whilst I’m sure that’s not the case, it is quite remarkable in this day and age that it can take literally years to get a working broadband box installed. I’m sure if this was a connection to the Prime Ministers house things would be moving much more quickly! We will continue to email, telephone and request meetings until this sorry saga has been fixed.