Historical factoids 1:

[Mal]

With the furore generated about this new hotel idea and it seems I’m somehow involved and not paying heed to democracy, let’s lay out what really happened over the years.

When Labour was originally in charge their idea was to build 60 odd houses in what was Tesco’s car park. Around 700 of us turned up at the library and told them in no uncertain terms that we wanted to see commercial development in the town centre not housing! That plan was hastily redrawn!

We then had a consultation on the proposed town centre design and were given 4 options for the layout as well as the styles of buildings. Most of us picked the ‘wrong’ design and the scheme went forward with the designs that the great and good thought were best for us!

We saw the Make a Noise demo which was supposed to give a kick up the backside and demonstrate local feelings yet still nothing happened.

The Tories then came into power at NCC claiming Bedlington was very important to ‘us’. To be fair we did see £12-14M in one year’s budget for our Town Centre redevelopment but as they are annual budgets and no substantial scheme came forward that money never materialised!

We finally saw a scheme come forward which had around 45,000sq ft of retail development, of which Aldi was just under 20,000sq ft and the linchpin for the whole development.

Covid came along and all the potential retailers went underground with a cull on all their new developments. Aldi were persuaded to carry on with theirs.

The Gov then announced funding to get schemes like the one for Bedlington back on track and we managed to secure that funding by matching it. This is what is being used to do the 4 shops and 6 apartments at the Market Place.

We then saw potential funding in the Borderlands project albeit on a much reduced level (£3M) but still that could be seed funding to get the main development back on track.

(Several community consultations later and we still see a leisure offer as being consistently the number one response. )

Another community consultation on what people wanted to see developed has resulted in over 35 potential projects which are to be wrapped up in a Bedlington Place Plan.

We then see a hotel project being put forward not by NCC but by local councillors, of which I’m certainly not one of them. This scheme at Bedlington Station could wipe out all the Borderlands funding for the whole of Bedlington! That wasn’t why I fought to get Bedlington into the Borderlands funding and kept pushing it along!

https://www.youtube.com/live/Q4zZGP1LXjI...

With that out of the way I do believe we need to see Bedlington as a destination town and for that we need a USP. We do need the normal range of what anyone would expect in a Town the size of Bedlington but we also need a draw so we get footfall from other places too. That’s the opportunity I see in getting the marketplace development right.

PS. Back in the annuls of time in the late 60’s just before Wansbeck District Council came into being, Bedlington Urban District Council had plans for a hotel and leisure centre in Bedlington Town Centre. Pity they didn’t see them through!