£14m aid for heritage site

From The Leek and Post Times - 28 September 2005:

There are so many issues to tackle in our constituency, but I am heartened that this summer we have at last made real progress on one of the priorities I set myself - getting something done about Chatterley Whitfield's abandoned colliery land, and giving hope back to the people who live in communities beside Chatterley Whitfield.

So I was really pleased that the latest announcement from Gordon Brown and John Prescott to award £14 million from the Coalfields Programme for our bid to make the land stable, deal with culverts and collapsing drains, and then re-landscape the area, was at last made.

I know there are many who have ties going back donkey's years with the coal mine - a great uncle of mine was a safety officer there and my granddad, like many, lived on a smallholding and walked miles to the pit.

The bonus for me was that this news comes in August when I could join the other partners to celebrate the good news, rather than having to be at Westminster. The £14 million is further being matched with money from English Heritage, the National Lottery and also European Regeneration money. This means that the project will now go out to public consultation and all going well, tenders will be set for work to start in two years.

Having brought English Heritage and Stoke-on-Trent City Council to the table five years ago to form a partnership to look at the extent of dereliction and to see what future uses could be made of the scheduled ancient monumnet and surrounding land, I was always realistic about the scale of the challenge. But the extent of the land remediation that is now known to be needed has confirmed that this is not a challenge we can ignore.

The very active Friends of Chatterley Whitfield are watching all of this unfold. They would happily show you around the historic site over the Heritage Open Days weekend which takes place between September 10 to Septemebr 13. Heritage sites across the country are open to the public, often for the first time, and more can be found out at www.heritage opendays.org.uk.