Community Update

Northumberland County Council has confirmed that it has now instructed Youngs RPS to market the former Tourist Information Centre for rent and they will be putting the property on the open market in the coming weeks. NCC will then review the levels of interest and proposed uses after a period of marketing and the Parish Council has asked to be consulted on any eventual end user of this site.

Craster Parish Council has formally asked the National Landscapes (formerly the AONB) to not pursue their initiative of a Conservation Area designation for parts of our parish. National Landscapes have confirmed that they will now cancel this entirely.

At its last meeting, Craster Parish Council formally supported Newcastle United's Dan Burn (a Northumberland resident) being awarded the Freedom of Northumberland after his Carabao Cup Final goal.

Two new heritage blue plaques – dedicated to renowned artist Leonard Charles Evetts and Little Adam’s House – will be installed in the coming weeks as part of the Parish Council’s initiative to celebrate our heritage. This has been fully funded by our holiday let owners and we will be hosting an unveiling ceremony in the coming months (more details to follow).

A very big thank you to everyone for their feedback on the recent work undertaken to a number of our footpaths. Our contractor Steve is a hero and we cannot thank him enough for this.

Craster Parish Council will be working with partners to support two major events in our community this year – VE Day on 8th May and Lifeboat Day. A big thank you to all involved in the organisation of these events. We are really looking forward to seeing our community come together for these events.

Works to the entrance of our village are nearing completion and we thank NCC for their excellent work on this. The new gateway to our beautiful village received resident support last year and we are delighted to see this finally come to fruition. We hope that this will have the desired impact of encouraging vehicles from visitors to only use our car park and not to park in the village. The new grass verge areas to the entrance of the car park will create an added area of greenery which the Parish Council shall support NCC in maintaining.

The Parish Council met with NCC Highways Officers earlier this month and redundant signage to the crossroads heading towards the Tower will be removed. In addition, NCC Officers will look to have parts of Heugh Wynd repaired, as the Parish Council has raised a number of issues with this road and asked that the entirety of the road be resurfaced in our Local Transport Plan priorities.

We are continuing our efforts to speed up Vodafone and EE becoming part of the mobile phone mast. All residents, no matter which network they use at present, should be able to benefit from this mast.

Finally, following our meeting with and letter to our Member of Parliament David Smith, the Minister has now responded with the reply included in this web page. The response does not address our request for a new planning Use Class C5 directly and we will therefore be responding accordingly.

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