Next week Heritage Open days are on with over 70 different free events and access to many buildings not normally open around the County. You can find out more here:

http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/

If you know of any charity, sports, community or voluntary groups in Newton Hall, Framwellgate Moor, Brasside or Pity Me who need some money, we may be able to assist or point them in the right direction if we can’t. Contact one of us using the contacts in the Contact Us page.

Following on from the improvements which your county councillors secured to bus services in Brasside, more good news.

There will now be a bus every half an hour instead of just one an hour or less as before.

I have uploaded the new timetable which can be seen 42_Arriva_Scarlet_Band.

The new service will run by Scarlet Band on the opposite half hours to Arriva and will go from Brasside to Pity Me, Framwellgate Moor and North Road on Mondays to Fridays.

Our press release: Continue reading →

Framwellgate Moor Parish Council has now received its gritting machine. The aim of the multipurpose vehicle is to provide additional services in the parish for example some footpaths which the County Council doesn’t currently grit. I provided some funding from the local neighbourhood budget towards the cost and am currently trying to find out why the Parish, some seven months later hasn;t been given the money by the council, but anyway, if there are specific winter maintenance issues in the area which you feel were not addressed last year, please let us know. Your county councillors will be working with the Parish and County to make sure as much as possible is done to help out in the winter months.

Just read next weeks Cabinet report and it shows that the General reserve – that’s the part of the reserve allocated to nothing specific – is set to rise from £24 million to £27 million by the end of this year. Yes – that’s another £2.7m added to reserves.

I think the council needs to give serious consideration to allocating some of this cash towards infrastructure improvements – roads, pavements, housing, as well as extra cash for engineering and manufacturing apprenticeship schemes – as outlined by the Lib Dem group last year when we said there was enough money to do this – clearly this latest report shows that they could have spent a bit more on these kind of schemes, so come on Labour, get some of this money spent – you can’t complain nationally about money not being spent by the government and then hoard cash at home.

Perhaps they just don’t want to spend any of the reserves until after the general election. Fly on the wall at Labour head office: “Don’t help the economy when Labour aren’t in power nationally it will benefit the coalition.”

A cynical view perhaps, but with reserves increasing again at DCC it is rather odd that they don’t want to do any of the things recommended by Lib Dem , Independent and Tory councillors to boost the local economy. I know many of their own councillors want to see more spent on the things I mention above.

Working with council officers we have come up with what we believe will be a solution to the problem parking at Beech Road Shops. So many people are parking here and using the area almost as a park and ride or park and walk for the hospital, Durham and other locations, that it is making it really difficult for anyone using the shops.

After two years of discussions including a consultation, an alternative plan of action is being funded by your county councillors. We are providing funding for limited waiting parking bays outside the shops using some of the local funding the council provides us with.

The diagonal parking bays I had marked up last year through the council will now be restricted to 2 or three hour parking once the consultation has been carried out. The rest of the parking in the area will be left unrestricted. This should ensure that at any time there is at least some space for passing trade, helping some of our smaller local shops.

Priory Road – We are in discussions with officers over the provision of additional parking bays on Priory Road where there are serious parking issues during the week with many residents unable at times to even get onto the road to get to the front of their houses.

There are a couple of options and we will be contacting residents in the coming weeks.

As we promised, the new play facilities at Caterhouse Road for younger children have now been completed. This project, three years in the making took longer than we wanted after delays from the Labour-run council. The pressure from your Lib Dem councillors paid off and we now have a great new play area and football posts.

We have also made sure that the area is checked by neighbourhood wardens and the local police on a regular basis to make sure that the play park is kept in good condition and free of problems. Any issues call one of us.

We have now had confirmation that the work your Lib Dem councillors discussed with the council over the last few months relating to repairs at Richmond Road Play area have now been completed. If there are any issues at any play areas in the area please let us know.

I have been hard at work with Amanda and Mamie since the election trying to make sure that the next round of improvements for Pity Me come to fruition.

I am now happy to confirm that following on from the improvements to Pity Me Front Street late last year we have been successful in securing work to complete the next phase of the project which will rebuild a further 60m of paths from 52-58 Front Street.

In addition we have now gained a further £10,000 contribution from highways department which we are matching from local funds to fully rebuild the 150m stretch of pavement in front of Oxley Terrace.

This will mean that a huge proportion of the pavements and parking areas along the Front St through Pity Me will have been upgraded by next year. When you consider that hardly anything was done for decades in the village with Labour councillors, I’m pretty proud of how far we have come in such a short space of time.