Among the issues we discussed were improved access to the coast and also our longer-term plan to attract funding to encourage more visitors to come to Crimdon. Both of these issues build on recent schemes initiated through the Crimdon Investment Plan (please see posts dated Sunday 2 April 2017 & Thursday 13 April 2017 for background information).
We were also told that a bid had been prepared by a partnership led by the Heritage Coast team and then submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for additional funding to establish the Seascape project. The aim of the scheme is to improve access to the coast and also generate a better understanding of the landscape and heritage of the North East coastal strip between South Shields and Teesside.
With this in mind we were delighted to hear yesterday that the HLF funding bid had been successful. Please follow the link below for a press release issued by the Durham Heritage Coast partnership giving further details of the project, including its broad aims and expected outcomes:
http://www.durhamheritagecoast.org/our-coast/news/
We are pleased to note that there is a fairly strong community element attached to the HLF funding so we will continue to meet with officers from the Durham Heritage Coast partnership to make sure that our patch benefits as much as possible from this funding stream.
We believe that at the very least it can generate greater interest in the Durham coast and thereby strengthen our continuing campaign to develop more and better visitor and tourism facilities at Crimdon.
