Trust Life #152: News from Amble Development Trust
Hello everyone, welcome back to Trust Life. Since Easter, we have the start of what we hope will be a busy business season.
As many will have noticed the Playzone is now taking shape. As I write, we will commence a period of four weeks for the surface ‘curing’, before the markings can be worked on the surface. The company carrying out the work have been really good to work with, which is reassuring after the lengthy negotiations.
Work on the new Playzone
Speaking of which, we have still to receive confirmation from NCC regarding their Park & Stride requirements for the JCSC new build, despite many requests for further information.
As this will require a legal agreement outlining each party’s liabilities, it isn’t something that can be assumed that permission has been granted. But we have been asking for well over a year now, so can only hope that any new administration within NCC will be more communicative!
Back to the Playzone: If you know of any groups or organisations who would like to book, please pass on contact details as we will get in touch as soon as the booking system is in place. Or perhaps you would like to volunteer to sit on the steering group? This would offer the opportunity to feed in ideas for other uses.
Staying on the health and wellbeing theme and JCSC build, many comments to the Neighbourhood Plan have been about lack of facilities in the town, so in true Trust fashion we are looking at options for retaining the existing gym which houses amongst other things a climbing wall and dance studio.
For the past 31 years, Amble has had to look at things differently to attract money and as there is little likelihood of money being available for a purpose built leisure centre, we would look at the combined facilities of the welfare, gym and JCSC offer to create a Sporting Village. If you have any thoughts or ideas on this please get in touch to let us know. It would help with building a strong case for its retention. But we would require this asap so it can be presented to NCC prior to preparation for demolishing the building.
The Neighbourhood Planning steering group has been awarded additional funding to bring in consultants to carry out a housing needs assessment. They will look at all planning developments, local labour and income brackets, housing markets and evidence of housing requirements to determine what housing is required over the term the HDP covers. For future updates, log on to the website (https://www.ambleplan.org) which will be populated with news as well as posts on social media, and in The Ambler.
Our job search facilities are open from 9am – 5pm each week day. If you would like to contact the Ambler or require a CV you can do so by ringing: 01665 712929 or emailing editor@theambler.co.uk or Julie@ambledevelopmenttrust.org.uk
Julia, all Trust staff and Trustees
julia@ambledevelopmenttrust.org.uk
