Good afternoon,

As you may have noticed, we are making good progress with the drainage work on Dark Lane and are at the St George’s junction now. We have moved the traffic lights tight up to our working area allowing access onto Dark Lane from Thorp Ave. On Monday next week, we will be continuing our drainage across the road into the St George’s hospital access road switching traffic onto the inbound carriageway. While we complete this last short section of drainage within St George’s access road, access onto St Georges access road from the Whorral Bank direction will be extremely difficult for larger vehicles and would therefore suggest that any vehicles larger than a car / small van approach this junction from the town centre.

On the assumption that we do not come across any unforeseen issues in this last stretch, we expect to complete our drainage work by Saturday 25 March. We are in discussion with Northumberland County Council regarding the permanent resurfacing of the inbound carriageway and are hopeful that this work can follow directly on from our drainage works starting Monday 27 March for a further 3 to 4 days. On completion of the resurfacing work we will then re-establish the pedestrian crossing outside Morrisons.

Thanks as always for your patiences and cooperation during our works.

Good Morning

I just wanted to inform you we will be changing the traffic management on Dark Lane next week. It will be Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th March from 6pm until 9pm. (same arrangement as Tuesday of this week)

We need to conduct some survey work and it will mean we will be moving the traffic lights further along Dark Lane towards the roundabout near Morrisons and we will need to temporarily close the access onto Dark Lane from Howard Terrace. Once the surveys are complete the lights will revert back to the existing arrangement each evening in time for the following morning commute.

These times were deliberately chosen to minimise the disruption to you all. 

To residents and motorists..........Thank you for your patience and understanding whilst we carry out this work.

Good Morning,

Tonight around 6:30pm (after rush hour) we will need to make an adjustment to the traffic management. It will be for a couple of hours whilst we conduct some emergency remedial work on a manhole lid we installed.

The traffic management changes will mean we will close off Howard Ter and move the lights back along Dark Lane towards Morrisons, this is a temporary arrangement  just for the duration of the this work. Tomorrow morning the lights will be reverted back to the current arrangement from around 6.00am, again we have chosen these times to minimise the disruption.

Thank you all for your continued patience during this work and don't forget if you wish to ask any questions or if you have any queries call into the Town Hall today between 2-4pm to see Paul or please contact us via the portal.

Good afternoon,

You may have noticed a change in the traffic management on Dark Lane. On Tuesday night, we moved the traffic management further around the bend which allowed us to re-open access onto Dark Lane via Howard Tce. However, as we have moved closer to the junction with St George’s Hospital, the 2 way lights have caused one or two issues and in the interests of safety we have therefore switched to 3 way lights around this junction to ensure all traffic can access on and off Dark Lane safely.

The 3 way lights will remain on Dark Lane now until we have completed the drainage work onto St George’s Hospital access road.  The traffic lights controlling traffic from Whorral Bank will remain in position throughout the remainder of our works, however, as we progress towards St George’s and reinstate behind us, we will move the traffic lights controlling traffic from the town centre further around the bend and shorting our working area.

At this stage we are  unable to re- open the pedestrian crossing adjacent to Morrisons. We will however monitor this situation as we progress away from the town centre with a view to bringing these back into operation as soon as we can.

Thanks again for your continued patience and cooperation

Good afternoon,

This week we are again making steady progress along Dark Lane towards the St George’s Hospital junction. Excavations are still deep as can be seen from the photographs below but we are almost through the highest point on Dark Lane and next week the drainage work will start to get a little shallower and hopefully progress will increase.

The trial pit we dug last Saturday confirmed that there is an issue with the level of the BT cables crossing Dark Lane near the junction with St Georges. The good news is that we have had a BT Engineer out this week and we are planning to dig down and lift these up on Saturday 25 February. This will ensure that we can get underneath these services with our pipework when we come to this in the next few weeks.

As we did last weekend, the two way traffic lights will be extended to the east of St George’s junction to carry out this work and traffic leaving the hospital junction onto Dark lane will be manually controlled. We expect to complete this piece of work on Saturday including the temporary reinstatement and will return the traffic management back to normal by the end of the working day.

Progress elsewhere on site has been very good and I have also included a photograph below showing the construction of the new pumping station up at the new Fairmoor roundabout (you’ll notice the new northern bypass work in the background which is almost complete as well!!!)

Thanks again for your continued patience.

Good afternoon,

On Wednesday morning we successfully moved the traffic management further round the bend closing off access to Dark Lane from Thorp Avenue and extending our working area towards the junction of St George’s Hospital. We also lifted the closure onto Dacre Street from Morrisons roundabout and traffic seems to be moving well following the changes.

We have been making steady progress through the deepest section of drainage and we are still slightly ahead of programme. Tomorrow, we will be extending the working area to the east of St Georges’ Junction to carry out a trial pit on existing services to confirm levels using the existing two way lights to control traffic on Dark Lane. While access to and from St George’s Hospital will be maintained, we will be manually controlling traffic leaving the hospital junction back onto Dark Lane. This will be completed tomorrow and our traffic management will return to normal by the end of the day.　

Please can we remind motorists to adhere to the closures onto Dark Lane from Howard Terrace and Thorp Avenue. While incidents are few and far between, these road closures are in place to manage the flow of traffic and ensure the safety of all road users.　 We would urge motorists not to put themselves or other road users in danger by ignoring these.　

Thanks again for your continued patience.

Good afternoon,

Following on from Joan’s update earlier this week, we are looking to move our working area along Dark Lane 9am on Wednesday 15 February. While we will maintain 2 way traffic lights on Dark Lane for the time being, we will be closing access onto Dark Lane from Thorp Ave. For a short period of time there will be no access onto Dark Lane from either Howard Tce or Thorp Ave making Howard Tce a ‘No through road’ from the junction of Wellway / Cottingwood Lane.

We will however be removing the restriction allowing access onto Dacre Street via Morrisons roundabout.

Once we switch back to three way lights for the final section around the junction of St Georges Hospital, we will then be in a position to re-open access from Howard Tce but again, we will keep you updated on progress.

This latest change will also close off access to the public footpath running through Tommy’s Field Allotments. Alternative access to the allotments can be taken from the Riverside / Cotting Burn footpaths.

Thanks again for your continued patience.

Good Morning All,

After speaking to Michael and John I just thought I'd just "top you up" with progress from site. Thankfully the gas main issue has been resolved so what we thought would have hindered us has proved to be not too tricky after all. We are currently working along from the junction from Howard Terrace along Dark Lane towards Thorpe Ave. Next week, ahead of schedule we will be moving the traffic lights further along Dark Lane and will need to close access onto Dark Lane from Thorp Ave. We kindly ask you to be that little more vigilant as the road signs etc will be adjusted accordingly.

Please don't hesitate to contact us using the portal or come along to the Town Hall next Tuesday afternoon (2-4pm), we would be only to happy to discuss any questions you may have.

Good afternoon,

Following on from my previous update, this week we have been dealing with issues surrounding a large dia gas main and concrete slab crossing our trench. We have been working closely with Northern Gas Networks to agree a suitable method to safely complete this short section of drainage beneath the gas pipe. While on site, they detected a minor leak on a gas main within the footpath and have complete a repair. While we have been developing a solution to safely cross beneath the gas main, we have jumped ahead and have completed the construction of the next chamber at the eastern edge of our working area. We expect to start the short section of tunnelling work beneath the gas main on Monday next week and can then re-commence with progress on the pipework heading towards the Health Centre. Having completed the construction of the manhole, we now need to wait until we can start the tunnelling section before we can proceed. Unfortunately this  means that again we will not be working  tomorrow. Apologies for the lack of progress this week and once passed this tricky section we will again be doing everything we can to make up this time.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on site we are making good progress with the construction of the gravity sewer within St Georges Hospital, rising mains along the edge of the new northern bypass and construction of the pumping station up near the new Northgate roundabout.  

Good evening,

Just a quick update from site today. We have been making very good progress along Dark Lane this week but today, we have encountered a large concrete slab within the trench protecting a medium pressure gas main. Northern Gas Networks will be attending site on Monday and  we expect to agree a plan to safely excavate beneath the gas main and continue with our progress. Unfortunately this  means  we will not be working tomorrow (Saturday 28 January), however, we will still have a traffic management operative on site over the weekend to oversee the temporary lights (7:30am - 7:30pm Satuday and 10am until 4pm Sunday).

Paul