Killingworth Road - wall repair

Good afternoon

I wanted to provide you with an update about what’s been happening this week and provide a plan of what we will be working on moving forward to get us to the point of starting on the ground.

This week, we have had confirmation that we don’t need planning permission to rebuild the wall which is good news. We have had verbal agreement to the Approval In Principle from NCC which allows us to progress the design and firm up the drawings.

The property surveys are almost complete and we propose to carry out the boreholes week commencing 1st March.  

Our Estates team will be posting formal notices in the back lane to inform you that the boreholes are to commence. This is a legal requirement.

 The Environment Agency have confirmed that there is no need for Water Framework Directive Assessment as we are not altering the watercourse, again this is good news.

Following our meeting on 29th January, as promised, we approached Newcastle City Council about alternative parking and they have confirmed that they won’t allow the use of either the bus lane or the cycle lane for safety reasons. They are also unable to approve the installation of a mirror to aid visibility when exiting the back lane. They have taken away the request to reduce the speed limit however have pointed out this would be a legal process and may take some time. I’m sure this is disappointing and we would welcome any further suggestions for how these issues might be addressed. We are also speaking to local councillors about alternative approaches.

We will be inspecting the dumpy bags and the fencing on a weekly basis moving forward.

Plan of our next steps:

As I mentioned above, we will be doing the two boreholes 1st March . The analysis of the samples will then be carried out and this will feed into the detailed design.

On-going - finalise structural  surveys which are almost completed – Sanderson Weatherall will then produce the reports for each property

w/c 15th February - submit Flood Risk Activity Permit Application to the Environment Agency

w/c 8th March – Esh Stantec will be finalizing the detailed design of the required work

8th March – 31st March - prepare contract documentation, finalize costs, obtain approvals & formally award the contract to Esh Stantec

1st April – 19th April -  progress health and safety planning, procure the required materials to enable us to  commence construction.

We will update you on this in future weeks so you know how we are progressing with that timetable.

Kind regards

Rachel