Stephen

How would you feel about some playground equipment on the 20 acres though or, say, a crazy golf course, as long as most of it was left as open field?

Yes, by next week the town council should be in a position to say how much it has in its budget to spend on events.

But Venus is hotter than Mercury which is some 61 million km closer to the sun than Venus.

I think it is just pubs and restaurants but needs to be more than that to be successful. Perhaps late night shopping one day a week with other services (the library at the moment) timed to match it.

We're working on a grants policy for the town council in Bedlington. The aim of this is to help people who want to organise their own activities, i.e. clubs, teams, groups etc who have ideas for things to do in town but need a bit of help to get started, or expand. We're talking about small grants for things like kit, equipment, materials, venue hire etc There's already another thread about a leisure centre and Bedlington Forum has been working on that, so we're looking at what can be done to bring Bedlington back to life in the meantime. Things that will encourage people to spend time in town, hopefully helping the local economy too. So while this policy is still being written you have a chance to influence the kind of activities we should be trying to help - what would everyone here like to be able to do in Bedlington?

Reading the NPL article it appears that this is not an official council survey, but a political one carried out by Ashington Lib Dems. Actually there seems to be a lot of resistance to replacing the existing Ashington Leisure Centre with a new one although the County appears to believe they can run a new leisure centre at less cost than £300,000 a year for ALC. My guess is that the survey is an attempt to find if the wider public i.e. not just those involved in the ALC campaign would support this. The survey Malcolm mentions will be a far more professional one that won't just ask whether people want leisure facilities in Bedlington, but what they should be, where and how much they would cost. My view is that we've always been told that there might be funding available for a new leisure centre e.g. from Sport England, but we would never be able to afford the running costs. This has been based on the assumption that all leisure centres cost as much as Ashington to run, but Morpeth (for one) is a lot cheaper. If the money could be found to build a leisure centre, perhaps from a combination of grants and council funding if available, then you could well get interest in a private company to run it on behalf of the council as they would not have had to take the risk of making a big investment up front.

I agree with this. I think Bedlington has in some ways suffered because it has had relatively high employment, unfortunately though most people are employed outside the town. I think it would be easier to find office space than factory space in the town centre and would guess that many of us have those kind of jobs. Keep people in the town from 9-5 and we will spend more money in local shops. Another suggestion mentioned at a recent Forum meeting was to build a night-time economy, in other words if people have to commute away for work, try to get them when they get back home.

Although... the town council is currently working on a grants scheme to try to help groups and clubs get activities going on in the town (sports, entertainment, events, music, arts, crafts, hobbies etc). If there was a local currency and there were enough suppliers of sports equipment, kit, musical instruments, venues etc participating in it, then the council would get more value for money i.e. a bigger positive effect for Bedlington by buying and making grants in Bedlington pounds.

It's terrifying. It isn't just the debt, it's the budget deficit - £20 million an hour being spent that we don't have. Or to put it another way I reckon it's about 36p on top of the basic rate of income tax. So if the next government is to achieve the target of halving the deficit in four years, it will have to make huge cuts in public spending and no doubt big tax rises too... and even if successful then the debt will still be going up by £90 billion a year.

Hi Malcolm, I was being a bit too cynical there about the settlements in implying cause and effect, but if the projected savings were £17 million and the settlement reduction is £20-30 million, then all the savings will go to the UK taxpayer rather than the local taxpayer. Northumberland isn't alone in having a big settlement reduction though, I know Gateshead and South Tyneside are having to make similar cuts. I didn't explain the VAT issue very well... basically under the poll tax everyone was expected to pay a significant fee to their council. When it was replaced by the council tax then large numbers of people became exempt due to their financial circumstances. So central government had to make up the difference (otherwise the council tax would have been enormous for those who were paying it). To raise the money for the national pot to replace the money now going to councils, the government put VAT on fuel. So if they are now reducing the amount of the national pot that goes to local councils, we ought to see a reduction in national taxation but of course you are right, due to the recession then the government is receiving less income tax and VAT (the effect is probably worse than the unemployment figures would suggest as of course you had a lot of eastern europeans working here and paying income tax who have now gone home). Our councils will also receive less council tax too as more people will have lost their jobs and become eligible for council tax reductions.

Malcolm, I think you've missed the point. It's central government that will get the promised savings because they've reduced the settlement and once you realise that then you can spot the motive for the government going for the County option, despite the fact that the public, and every district and borough branch of the local political parties (and every group except the ruling group at the time on the County itself) opposed it. We ought to get that money back in reduced income tax or other national tax breaks (or a VAT reduction as ultimately the central money that was put into local government ever since the poll tax was abolished came from VAT increases). Except of course we won't, due to the massive national budget deficit.

The county haven't suggested we take it on or even made any offer, to date anyway. We're making our own enquiries to see what can be done, which might just be coming up with new ideas for the county and lobbying on behalf of Bedlington. Can't be certain until we get the breakdown, but it must be possible to run the centre for less than £78000 a year

First - I'm not necessarily suggesting the town council take it on, really I just want to see what the financial position is and therefore what the options are... that might be the answer but I wouldn't get too carried away with it just yet. Second - not sure what you mean by your question about 'entirely' voluntary? Are you asking if the town councillors would be looking after the rooms and whether they would want some payment for it? I can only speak personally here but I already have one full-time day job and one voluntary job so I wouldn't have time to do it. As for payment, we all stood for election to the council in the full knowledge that it would be unpaid and nobody has ever expressed any desire to change that. We do have some groups that are longstanding users of the community centre and who I think could be trusted to collect the key from somewhere before they use the room, and lock up and hand the key back afterwards (or even have their own copies, assuming that's OK with the insurance company). Perhaps for new groups you could ask for a deposit. So again, I think there are other ways of running the centre.

Arthur has been promised a breakdown of the costs so we should get some hard facts soon. If we found out what the minimum running costs were - maintenance and utilities etc, then it might be possible to run the centre with volunteers to handle the room booking and access, and paying for a daily cleaning service.

Good point. I don't know how the figures break down but as I work for another large organisation (BT, though it's been getting rapidly smaller in the last year) I'd bet there are management overheads included i.e. senior people in the Leisure department whose costs will be divided between all the amenity budgets. I wouldn't want to write a business plan based on my back of an envelope sums but I do think it shows that marketing the community centre to increase its usage isn't going to turn it around by itself, which is why I was trying to think of something that would share the cost.

After some rough calculations, if the Community Centre really costs £78,000 a year to run, then to break even it would have to be earning £30 every hour, for 10 hours a day, every weekday, 52 weeks of the year.

I first posted the line about our claim to fame and I probably shouldn't have used the word claim - as yes, we have better claims to fame. For actual fame around the world though, I think the dog has it. Lack of accommodation shouldn't put anyone off though, Bedlington is an easy day trip from Newcastle though the fact that the only way to get here by public transport is by bus rather than train makes that less obvious to visitors.

There was a story in The Journal saying that the County council would be looking at the least used libraries as part of the budget discussions. According to the Journal Bedlington Station was in the bottom six, and Bedlington was outside this six but in the bottom 12. So we don't know if anything will happen to the library, but can't assume it will be safe either.

How long ago was that? I suppose that means it must be possible unless the old library had any big problems. It could be argued that this would be a step backwards then, but I think it might be a way of keeping what's most useful about the community centre. You can book much better small and medium sized rooms at the Salvation Army, and there are other places to drink if not so many as there used to be. The one facility that doesn't seem to have any substitute is the big room available for public use.

This is my own opinion and not a Town Council suggestion... As there is apparently a question mark over the library too, I wonder how feasible it would be to move the bookshelves from the library to the ground floor of the community centre, with the bar area being the main part of the library (and the librarian working behind the bar), and the children's library in the youth room. Then potentially you could have a library on the Front Street, opposite the new Market Place, guarantee the future of a decent looking building on that side of the street, keep the use of the room on the top floor (I don't think there's any other room of that size available in Bedlington?) and sell the land that the current library building is on.

I agree, if Bedlington has any international claim to fame then it's the Terrier, but so far we have nothing trying to exploit this to attract any visitors.

I don't know any more about it than what's in that press release, but it seems to be saying that the whole marketplace will be the highly attractive public space, and that Tesco will be putting a new facade on their store and extension to fit in with that. The new market place does look very nice, but I think the important thing is having plenty of events taking place in it.

West Bedlington Parish is the Bedlington West and Bedlington Central wards of the County. Gallagher Park is in East Bedlington Parish, Beaufront Park is in West, then the boundary south of Gallagher Park cuts through Rosalind Avenue, Lily Avenue and Cornwell Crescent. All a bit arbitrary. I think Choppington aka North Bedlington is a natural community but splitting Bedlington in two was daft.

Having spent some time 'workshadowing' the lady organising the Remembrance Day Service and Parade (the Town Council will be taking it on as an official duty from next year), I know there was some doubt about the road closure but not the service. I was told by the local police that their events officer said it would be unlawful for a police officer to be involved in traffic management for a pre-planned event. I'm told that it was the county council who stepped in and saved the day, contrary to rumours. Merlin, I've always assumed that Bedlington's service was at 2pm so that the MP and Wansbeck District council officials could go to the Ashington one in the morning and Bedlington in the afternoon. Now that Wansbeck is no more I think it would be worth looking at moving it to the more traditional 11am.

Apparently the ice rink has been booked for the market place for 19th and 20th December, and there may be other Christmas events over the period 3rd-20th December. Hopefully I'll be able to post an update after Monday.