NCC Chair’s Report 2023

As a community council we are privileged to work with so many fantastic groups – this year in particular Guerrilla Gardeners, Newtongrange Park Life, NDT, NC1, Village Voices, The Dean Tavern, Newtongrange Primary School, St Annes, St Davids Day Centre, the library, the Church, the Police and National Mining Museum Scotland, and to become more aware of the progress of others like Star FC – along with engaging businesses like Be Happy Performing Arts Company, Pastel Bakery, The Sun Inn, Kaya’s and the Coop and our many regulars Bill, Robert, Ian, William, who’ve kept an eye on us this year.

All of this helps us work with our local councillors and the Midlothian executive to achieve a tangible understanding of what the community wants and how to go about getting it.

Our year in review:

It started with a bang as February brought the fight for fairer allocation of funds for Midlothian Council and addressing solutions for £13.85 million budget shortfall – so many voices were involved in this and while we were supportive of an approach to have SG funding independently reviewed the range of proposals from MC Business Transformation Steering Group were ultimately creative and our councillors rejected some of the more damaging including the closure of the leisure centre and Community Action Teams just as examples. There is still some hope of an improved outcome for distribution of SG funds that reflect Midlothian’s growth with regards to Early Learning and Childcare and we have a review of progress coming up in January following December budgets.

Also in Feb I had a meeting with NMMS curator Nicola Moss to see if there was any appetite to forge an alliance to build a community feature as we learned about the potential of community tourism to align protection of village heritage with something that could attract footfall to our village. This is something that is beginning to spark interest and the potential to engage the community – I’m hopeful Village Voices might play a key role and Ross had run away with the idea proposing maps of the mining tunnels and realigning the old Nitten app and Ross continues to lead on it now.

Spring saw the community get behind the Guerrilla Gardeners, breaking ground by the leisure centre with local businesses making donations through Fiona’s effort, and Laura leaning on our councillors for environmental funding – who were clearly smitten with the GGs advances! Also emerging then with nudges from Linda and June is the sensory garden, now planted and just awaiting its final resin coat touches, along with a fiery backlash over the furniture at the pool which at least meant the space was back on the agenda following a long campaign to address the site’s development. Meanwhile Ross tackled a surge of bicycle crime by organising a successful bike register event with Police Scotland at the library, one of the best of its type according to the police.

Every year we have a litter picks, usually several with Catherine with or without the rest of us and this April Ross and Sarah also lead the charge, (worth noting Catherine is looking for more recruits!) Also in April we heard from Archie at Star and fantastic 5 year plans with expansion across age ranges and ambition to move up two divisions and we also learned June would represent Scotland in Petanque.

In May our school parking issue still festered and Linda raised the walking route “footprints,” which are now back, and Laura picked up the lead for the Midlothian Climate Action Network. Sarah started work on the LPP feeding into the Midlothian Local Development Plan (2) to ensure development stays clear of important places and the communities needs are recognised.

There must be something about Summer nights because the June meeting saw our peak of 24 attendees and Robert “lost his marbles” in an impressive display about the state of Crawlees road. This has resulted in a list of agreed actions directly from Roads & transport Manager Wayne Clark, including signage and road markings, and a better understanding of the impact (and the challenges) of the areas development including a future distributor road and active travel routes – and to also learn we are not alone with input by Mayfield CC to also confirm Crawlees development is staged as a priority with the Springfield sites. We are waiting now for timescales from planning for MC to assess whether a capital spend is justified. Sadly, a recent accident might do more to impact this than our combined efforts.
Summer also saw the return of the Gardening Competition with judging in September– it was a modest re-entry contestant-wise, driven by Laura and judged by the Dalkeith Guerrilla Gardeners, but it created the most popular of our posts on facebook – so you can see the community is interested in this and hopefully paves the way to build on it next year with an earlier start and more support.
On the topic of FB – we have 1,531 followers – potentially half Newtongrange households – and Ross, our minute magnate, is also our social media and website post “local legend” keeping us connected with 20 posts on FB this year and 139 website posts including all our minutes, nearly 30 a year since we launched our website in Feb 2019.

The return of tennis in the park has taken a slower route but hopefully one to a more sustainable solution attracting the interest of LTA with a survey of the courts and shortlisting for funding for an all-weather surface. Meanwhile Mark Kenmure is checking that pavilion works are complete and has just this week offered a meeting to sort the lease. Hopefully this will see some joined up work with Sandy/Jake and the petanque team along with Dalkeith Thistle CFC and improve park access overall. Massive thank you to Michael Robson for keeping the ball rolling and bamboozling us with his connections.

September brought 242 responses for the LPP through the amazing work by Sarah to survey and consult the village to get a really significant response- great community feedback and comments have shaped the LPP into a draft but also how much work there is still to do. The LPP includes NCC and community thoughts on the Pools site additionally and the aim is for local and national government use the Newtongrange LPP to understand communities concerns then provide policy and resources to support development in an accountable way. It’s a really good piece of strategic work and we are among a few that have undertaken it, taking every opportunity we can to have our voice heard and keep us in the thoughts of our Council.

Meanwhile thoughts turned briefly to a future as a village twinned with… Dortmund for historical football relationships, or maybe the mining town of La Mure, with the success of Petanque, or maybe Port Sunlight… who knows(!) but this is an idea that could have many benefits as we build interest in village heritage toward Welfare Park’s Centenary – Sandy and Ross leading on this into 2024. And Laura was keen not to forget youth and is exploring options for funding a pump track to purpose the space at the top of the play park.

And as we head into winter and a well-earned break for December we can reflect on the many many minor issues like adjustments to paths for wheelchair access, leaking community building roofs, bus routes and stops, and zebra crossings (thanks to Betty & Maureen – now included in the LPP), skimming of the skatepark, weeding issues, attention for flooded roads, repairs to the grounds around the library and many many actions our councillors have been diligent about addressing on our and our communities behalf.

All this is on top of our core purposes like staying aware of planning applications that could impact the community like 4G masts and repurposing of property, attending and encouraging consultations like the pool site and the Open Space survey, feeding back on MC proposals, applying pressure to address derelict spaces like the Murderdean building (hopefully going to network rail), cross community council action to include more affordable housing and no further major developments in the ward, protecting heritage like John’s epic investigation into the heritage status boundaries which ultimately protect village history and assets.

Sometimes we forget that we are all volunteers…

As individuals and as a group, the NCC members volunteer a lot of time, with back of bar mat maths, something in excess of 1000 hours between us, in an effort to represent, support and improve our community and to help direct and influence community concerns in the best possible way. This is reflected in the engagement of our brilliant councillors, who must be thanked for their attendance, and fantastic working relationships with community groups and the MC executive. Once again, the members should all be very proud of this, and I feel sure the community won’t mind if I thank you on behalf of them for your service this year.