http://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/news/article/3756/burn_valley_improvement_works_to_begin
A MAJOR improvement scheme at a Hartlepool park is to begin next week and work is due to last for up to 12 weeks.
Starting on Monday, the beck in the upper Burn Valley Gardens is to be re-modelled to make it more natural and easier to access.
The works which are part of the Wild Green Spaces in Hartlepool project, are costing around £120,000 and are being funded by the National Lottery and the Environment Agency.
Deborah Jefferson from the Borough Council's Countryside Team said: "By re-aligning the beck, we aim to create meanders that will slow down its flow in times of high rainfall and make it easier to reach the water to observe wildlife.
"In some areas, it is intended to create grassy banks that will be graded all the way up from the beck to the perimeter of the park."
The improvements are to be carried out by main contractor Cleveland Land Services and the area will be closed to the public for the duration of the works.
Deborah added: "A lot of work will be going on over the next few weeks with some large pieces of equipment such as JCB diggers being used.
"This will, inevitably, lead to some disruption and we would like to apologise in advance for any inconvenience that might be caused. However, we believe the end result will be a much-improved park for local people to enjoy."
Other improvements include the replacement of crazy paving with new footpaths to provide better access to the park for elderly and disabled people.
The top half of a wall separating Burn Valley Gardens from the neighbouring Burn Valley Family Wood is also to be removed and replaced with a metal railing fence to introduce more light into the park. This will help improve ground flora and provide a direct link with Family Wood. This will also improve people's perception of safety in what is currently a rather dark area.
Some trees are to be removed to enable the works to be carried out following approval by the Council's arboriculture section and consultation with the local community. Replacement trees have been planted in the Family Wood and other areas of Burn Valley Gardens.
A programme of landscaping and planting is also planned following completion of the main works.
The three-year Wild Green Spaces in Hartlepool project was launched following a successful bid by Hartlepool Council in partnership with the Environment Agency and the Burn Valley Project Steering Group. It is being funded by Natural England through its Access to Nature initiative which, in turn, is part of the Big Lottery Fund's Changing Spaces programme.
I am old enough to remember several of the previous changes and I can not say they are all for the better. It seems to me something is being done just so you can say you did something!
Looking at old photos of York Road I was struck by how many trees have been removed over the years and how many of the trees in the War Memorial/Victoria Road were uprooted and replaced by......other trees.
It seems once the councillors who introduce improvement 6 are out of the way the new lot make improvement 7.
They in turn are all reversed by improvements 8 the next lot start.
Peddling fast and going nowhere seems apt!
Agreed MK1 ...the whole ethos of these officials is to introduce change for changes sake and move on. The timing is of course all to pot just before the school holidays !!! It could only happen in H/Pool or could it. These people are all over.
The improvements are to be carried out by main contractor Cleveland Land Services and the area will be closed to the public for the duration of the works.
suppose if we look i wonder who is on the directors board?or the like
just a little add on.
http://www.cleveland-land-services.co.uk/project.asp?ProjectID=104
The top part of the Burn Valley needs this revamp desperately, if only to compliment the £465,000 spent on the Improvements in Baden Street.
The £120,000 for the Burny & the £70,000 on Seaton Front would be better spent on general maintenance of those areas, walk throught the Burn Valley, the general condition of the place is a disgrace, walls damaged, flower beds full of weeds, rubbish all over the place, damaged pathways & the beck strewn with all sorts of stuff.
Another example, is the scruffy state of Summerhill, theres more ways to improve open spaces than to impliment major reconstruction works, but it depends on the people running the program, dare i suggest it could be another out of towner ?
It seems as though it`s spending money for spending moneys sake, take on a few more ground workers to look after our valuable open spaces, as a town have neglected the special areas of Hartlepool for too long.
To be fair, this sounds like another 'moan' by certain HTH forum contributors to what seems, by and large, to be a decent bit of work by HBC. Clearly I am by no means one of their biggest fans overall, but I don't think i'd be the first contributor to suggest that certain people on here 'pick their battles'.
come on perseus there background (h b.c) is a bit iffy,so you cant blame us for thinking the worst.
What's lacking in this model is ownership. It might look cheaper on a spreadsheet to bring in outside contractors for fancy schemes who do the work and then walk away, but in the long-term, it's the daily maintenance that makes the difference and you only get that with ownership. Bring back the Park Wardens who walk the walk daily and decide what routine maintenace needs doing and when.... the town is dotted with the remnants of schemes and initiatives which got a few councillors pic in the paper for a day, but are then left to slowly deterioate until they again qualify to become the next great scheme.
Quote from: not4me on June 25, 2012, 09: AM
What's lacking in this model is ownership. It might look cheaper on a spreadsheet to bring in outside contractors for fancy schemes who do the work and then walk away, but in the long-term, it's the daily maintenance that makes the difference and you only get that with ownership. Bring back the Park Wardens who walk the walk daily and decide what routine maintenace needs doing and when.... the town is dotted with the remnants of schemes and initiatives which got a few councillors pic in the paper for a day, but are then left to slowly deterioate until they again qualify to become the next great scheme.
I didn`t intend any critisism of improvement plans for the Burn Valley, but the opting out of "Ownership" as detailed in the above quote has been a major reason for the decline in public open spaces in Hartlepool for years.
General groundsmen who had their own particular areas to look after did a great job & as mentioned by perseus... for not a lot of money, they had a pride in keeping their park better than the rest, HBC have serious financial constraints, but the decline of the open spaces in the town began long before these constraints became apparent.
Short term gain is generally followed by long term loss, & there is no better example than in our open spaces.
The funding is from outside the authority and cannot be used for any other project that is clear.
Having a warden or any attendant will cost the council £25,000 a year, every year !
Multiply that for every park and you have a lot of money to find.
I for one support the renovation, gardens and design only last for so long before decay and repair
so lets just take the money and shut up moaning, if you can do better then go on the council.
Just look at how long it took to do a botch job of landscaping part of Seaton Front.
You don't get much done in 12 weeks, good luck to Burn Valley !
I tought that the last improvements to the beck were to straighten it out to reduce the risk of flooding?
It the improvements are similar to the top end (£170K+) where the new seats are too cold to sit on, then cross your fingers and anything else appropriate.
Quote from: notenoughsaid on June 25, 2012, 01: AM
Agreed MK1 ...the whole ethos of these officials is to introduce change for changes sake and move on. The timing is of course all to pot just before the school holidays !!! It could only happen in H/Pool or could it. These people are all over.
Aye, let's plan major earthworks and beck diversions in winter eh (and then probably come on here afterwards and moan about the costs and the budget overspends)? ???
I said nowt about cost.
I said that improvements for improvements sake are not always an improvement.
Especialy as the improvements made by attention seeking Councillor C nearly always means reversing the improvements of attention seeking Councillor A.
I can remember the pond that was in The Burn Valley and they filled it in. I remember the drinking Fouintain that used to be in the kids playground.
I remember lots of things that got moved and then replaced.
For starters one of the biggest wastes of money was the last 'improvement' of the War Memorial. A vast amount of money spent to basicaly move a few flower beds.
The fact someone else paid for it does not negate the fact it did not improve anything.
You don't get very much for £120 000 nowadays.
Quote from: perseus on June 25, 2012, 08: AM
else.
Also, residents in and around that area have complained about the beck for YEARS, in so far as it gets blocked with rubbish when it's a trickle, then gets flooded with water during rainy spells and end up dragging all of the rubbish down to the outlet at the bottom end where it stays for months and piles up. People have also for YEARS complained that the beck is too deep and far to wide in parts and is basically pretty unsightly. Nothing has ever really been really been done of any note by Lauderdale and previous Councillors.
I remember quite a few beck 'improvements. I have seen the water flowing over the banks many a time and unless they make it 10 foot deep they will never make it big enough to handle the flash floods.
I am puzzled where all the rubbish comes from and unless it can force its way through the bars at the opening at the top of Elwick road then it onbviously all comes from the Burn Valley itself.
On a slightly nostalgic note, does any other ex-folkie remember a tune called 'Salmon Tails up the Water' being renamed 'Kippers up Burn Valley Beck'? Think that it might have been the late but much missed Graham Whitley who coined the phrase, but am not 100% certain...just as a reminder, here's a concertina player's version....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybkjZ0SEsy4
Please, can we see how this turns out first before slagging it off, the Council are getting in the neck before the first shovelful has been removed! :)
Most of these projects tend to be funded by the taxpayer one way or the other and I live in hope that some sort of long-term improvement will come from this. However, the record isn't good. The record is that once the one-off funding pot is exhausted, any improvement is left dependent on maintenance funded by the council's own revenue stream - it's then that things start to deteriorate.
The Linear Park in Thornton Street is the obvious example but you'll also see the same on Stranton Green, the Block Sands and other places. In Stranton Green there is a commemorative plaque to some similar forgotten scheme which revamped the green. Once completed, HBC essentially walked away and it was left to revert back to its unmaintained state. On the Block Sands, the sponge-like safety surface is now a patch-work of ugly concrete, many of the play units have been removed and the line of embedded blue lights to the Fish Sands are gradually being filled in one-by-one with ashphalt rather than replace the bulbs. Have a walk round the Winfield Castle, bought and restored as a tourist attraction at no small expense and, for want of a coat of paint/yacht varnish is quickly becoming something of a derelict embarassment.
New schemes like Burn Valley are all very well and I hope it leads to something sustainable but until we learn to look after what we already have then improvements in one area will always be matched by deterioration in others. I don't think any of these schemes should be pursued without the necessary funding to maintain them being identified first. If it's a case that HBC doesn't have the money to maintain them then what's the point?
Spot on steveL... The almost total lack of maintenance by many HBC departments is a major source of the delapilated look of much of the town, & it didn`t start in the last few years, succesive labour councils have put other "More Important" projects before the planned maintenance programs for the towns infrastructure.
Maintenance of public places & open spaces is one of the best ways to showcase a town & its amenities, what we get in Hartlepool is a series of lame excuses of why it can`t be done.
But still the Masterplans come & go on a regular basis.... only in Hartlepool.
I remember something similar happening to the Old Cemetery. They stopped cutting the grass and maintaining it and declared that what they were actually doing was making it a haven for butterflies and wild orchids....worked a treat as they saved thousands ;D ;D