A year in review: 2010 on the Edge

With 2010 having drawn to a close I thought I would take a look back at the biggest news stories of the past 12 months in Alderley Edge.

Following months, if not years, of controversy the Tesco Express store celebrated its opening on February 5th with a donation of £500 to East Cheshire Hospice. Other new additions to Alderley Edge last year included the Village Cafe which also opened in February, Sam Ros Thai Restaurant at The Royal Oak pub, Trafford Road Barbers, Portland Wine and Runway. The most recent addition Grill on the Edge opened its doors just in time for Christmas following Living Ventures acquisition of London Road restaurant in November.

One of the most shocking news stories of the year broke on February 9th when a body was discovered at the house of Arran Coghlan on Brook Lane. Thanks to Cheshire Police we were able to publish, that day, what we believe was the first media report of the incident and overnight the reach of alderleyedge.com went far beyond our village. We provided regular updates throughout the year regarding this horrific incident, including Arran Coghlan being charged with the murder of gangster Stephen Akinyemi and those charges against him being dropped on 29th July because the Crown Prosecution Service were unable to prove that the defendant had not acted in self defence.

In April I attended my first Alderley Edge Parish Council meeting which I now attend every month to report on parish news. I also received financial reports from the Parish Council, requested under the Model Publication Scheme, which enabled us to look in to the reasons behind last year's 71% increase in the Parish Council Precept, which forms part of your council tax - according to the figures 58% of the precept was required for the operational costs of the Festival Hall.

At May's Parish Council meeting plans to build a new medical centre at the Festival Hall were described as "dead in the water" but at October's meeting it was reported that an outline agreement had been reached with the Primary Care Trust for them to occupy the space at the front of the redeveloped Festival Hall. The redevelopment is planned to be across three floors at the front of the building, with the new medical centre occupying the first two floors and the third floor being rented commercially. The two preferred bidders are still in discussion regarding the new plans and the Parish Council intend to start the development in May, following the Alderley Edge Festival which will be 100 years old in this year.

On April 14th there was a fatal accident in the village centre when, after having lunch with a friend, Mrs Janet Terras was tragically knocked down whilst attempting to cross London Road 10 metres south of its junction with Clifton Street. Tributes poured in as everybody close to Mrs Terras,72, from Mottram St Andrew was devastated by the news. A private family committal and Memorial Service was held at St Philip's Church.

The General Election took place on May 6th and I went along to Macclesfield Leisure Centre for the count to see George Osborne successfully defend his Tatton seat, which he first won in 2001, and retained in 2005. George Osborne won with 54.6% of the votes and an overall majority of 14,487. The turnout was 45,231, with 68.9% of the electorate voting in what is historically a Tory stronghold. It was a long but memorable night, during which I caught up with all the candidates, provided regular updates via Twitter and posted an election results article just before retiring to bed at 5am.

One of the highlights in the village social calendar was the return of the traditional village fete which took place on a gloriously sunny day in June. Despite clashing with England's World Cup match, which is best forgotten, it was another big success with nearly 2000 people turning up at Alderley Edge Cricket Club to raise over £500 for charity. New for last year, the hockey section of Alderley Edge Cricket Club held a 12 hour hockey game to raise money for their new astroturf pitch at The Ryleys playing fields, which they were granted planning permission for in March.

It was with great sadness that Cheshire East Council announced that Councillor Liz Gilliland passed away in the early hours of July 7th. The Conservative Councillor for Alderley Edge, who had been ill for some time, died at East Cheshire Hospice. Following her death a by-election was held on Thursday, September 30th where the Conservative candidate Matthew Lloyd was elected a Borough Councillor for the Alderley ward with 67.9% of the vote.

The Alderley Edge Parish Plan was published in July, intending to set the direction for Alderley Edge it is the culmination of many hours of work, by approximately 45 local residents over a long period of time. In November the Parish Council endorsed the Parish Plan as an expression of the community's aspirations and acknowledged it as a framework for community action within the Parish.

The future of Alderley Edge Post Office looked under threat in August as The Bubble Room submitted a planning application to extend in to 45 London Road, currently occupied by the Post Office. As a result of the public outcry The Bubble Room withdrew their planning application the following week, explaining that it had been made very much on the understanding that the Post Office was to be relocated within the village and therefore they submitted plans for change of use on what would be a vacant shop unit.

The retail business at the Post Office ceased trading on November 12th when the premises were repossessed by the landlord. Whilst the Post Office counter was not affected by the repossession, and the Royal Mail Press Office said "It is business as usual", Bluemantle have struggled to find somebody to take over the running of this vital service. They went through the process 4 times last year, with people having dropped out partly due to frustration at the length of time the whole process takes. Bluemantle have agreed with the gentleman who is currently running the Post Office that he will continue to do so until the end of January, but told us "potentially we will have to make a difficult decision."

Policing in Alderley Edge had a new face in August as Jim Newns was appointed as the Police Community Support Officer for the village. He has since set up base at the Festival Hall to allow him to spend as much time as possible in the village and be more accessible to local residents. Jim carries out monthly police surgeries whilst patrolling the village, to engage with people as they go about their business, and he is a regular reader of alderleyedge.com, frequently responding to members questions and comments.

To mark the opening of the bypass, representatives from Nether Alderley Parish Council, Alderley Edge Rotary Club, Wilmslow Running Club and the Combined Charities Christmas Shops came together to provide us with the opportunity to run, or walk, the bypass on Sunday October 24th which proved to be a spectacular occasion. 870 runners completed the 5 mile road race and 6000 people took the opportunity to walk the bypass before it opened to traffic. The total raised from race entry fees and donations to walk along the new road exceeded £18,000 and the organisers were delighted to present cheques, ranging from £200 to £1500, to 27 locally based groups at Alderley Edge Cricket Club in December.

The countdown was finally over when, almost a 100 years after the initial plans were drawn up, the Alderley Edge and Nether Alderley bypass was opened to traffic on Friday November 19th. The three mile route, built at a cost of £52m, was officially opened by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne over six months ahead of schedule. During 2010 we published nearly 40 articles related to the bypass which included regular updates from Birse Civils on the construction of the new road, details of local road and footpath closures along with aerial photographs.

Since the opening of the bypass the biggest area of contention has been Monks Heath. We have received numerous complaints from members about traffic congestion there, the introduction of another set of lights and what has been described as "a simple case of moving the bottleneck." The roadworks at Monks Heath were completed the week before Christmas so with traffic flow at this junction returned to normal it will be interesting to see if the problems with traffic queues at morning and evening peak times will be substantially reduced when the holidays are over and everyone returns to work.

In November we reported that the iconic view from The Edge, which previously provided uninterrupted natural views across the Cheshire Plain, has been broken up by the construction of a tennis court and outbuilding, located within the grounds of Finlow Farm. A retrospective planning application for the domestic outbuilding has been refused and another has since been submitted for the engineering works which were carried out to level the land to create the tennis court. The retrospective application proposes that the hard surface of the tennis court will be removed from the site and grass replanted in this area so it can be used as a lawn tennis court for a maximum period of 28 days per year.

In the same month Cheshire East Council confirmed that Councillor Frank Keegan had lost his job as Resources Portfolio Holder and been removed from the cabinet. At the time Councillor Wesley Fitzgerald was not prepared to comment but a couple of weeks later he released a statement saying that "the reason Cllr Keegan was removed from Cabinet was as a result of his conduct and behaviour when relating to Senior Officers and Council members." The following week Cheshire East Council announced that Councillor Keegan had been referred to the Standards Committee but they have declined to provide any reasons for this action.

Hundreds of locals gathered at The Parade on November 18th to see Manchester United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar switch on the Alderley Edge Christmas lights and signal the start of Christmas in the village. The second Alderley Edge Christmas Tree Festival took place during the last weekend in November and was officially opened by local author Alan Garner. The Alderley Edge Methodist Church looked stunning, decorated with 57 Christmas trees of all shapes, sizes, colours, and types which have been contributed by local organisations, schools and businesses.

On the same day the church clock was removed after 150 years of faithful service so it can be restored and all the clock faces can be replaced. The familiar chimes of Alderley Edge's first public clock will therefore not be heard until the work is complete, which is expected to be in June this year.

Another controversial subject we covered during the year was Dobbies plans to build a gardening superstore on a 17 acre site in Nether Alderley. The Dobbies Garden World application, which was submitted on September 28th 2009, was hit by complications last year which included the discovery of Great Crested Newts and then the Strategic Planning Board's refusal in October to extend the original planning permission to relocate the Matthews Garden Centre.

This refusal was significant because the Dobbies Garden World application sought to draw on the approved planning permission and transfer this consent to another site down the road and as reported last week Dobbies' agent GVA Grimley Ltd withdrew the planning application ahead of January's Strategic Planning Board meeting where it was scheduled to be discussed.

In terms of the weather, the year finished pretty much as it started in Alderley Edge with snow and freezing temperatures. According to our weather data, which is taken from the nearest weather station at Manchester Airport, the lowest temperature this year was -14, recorded on 12th December at 6.35am.

2010 marked a year of considerable growth for alderleyedge.com - both in terms of the size of our audience and the number of stories reported.

In January we joined the world of Twitter when I began tweeting breaking news and local observations, then in March we celebrated the first anniversary of alderleyedge.com.

After five months of hard work and quite a bit of frustration we were delighted to launch the next version of the web site on July 1st. Previously we had used a commercial content management system but in July we moved to a platform which we (that's the royal we) have specifically built to fit our requirements and make the site much more integrated.

In August we launched our weekly newsletter providing a weekly round up of the latest local news, upcoming events and new comments, reviews, and forum posts on the site, then in October our third community website went live with the launch of prestbury.com.

A lot happened in Alderley Edge in 2010, which it has been both interesting and challenging to cover. In total 598 articles were published and 693 members comments were posted on alderleyedge.com last year.

In November we had our busiest month with 11,370 unique visitors visiting alderleyedge.com. In total there were 24,153 visits in November and 93,179 pages were viewed - to put this in perspective the population of Alderley Edge is in the region of 5000.

We would very much like to thank you all for your support and the very generous feedback we have received to date. We really do want to know what you like about the site, what you dislike and anything else you would like us to cover. We want alderleyedge.com to serve the community as best it can so we really do need to hear your views. Please get in touch via the comment box below or by email.

Finally we want to express our gratitude to the local businesses who have supported us by advertising on alderleyedge.com: Select Learning Centres, Gusto, Hillcrest Homes, KJB Builders, Highams, The Artisan Meat Company, Knights Solicitors, Alberti Tiles, Affinity, Alderley Edge School for Girls, Corks Out, Black White Denim, Horseshoe Farm and Henry D Johnstone.

The advertising has been very well received and has sold out every month since we launched it in July but alderleyedge.com is still predominately self-funded. We still have some way to go before making it financially sustainable but we are making good progress and looking forward to sharing some more exciting developments with you in the new year.

Looking to the year ahead we know a parking review is scheduled to take place early in the new year and the election for Cheshire East Councillors will be held on May 5th. Alderley Edge May Festival, a new addition for 2011, will take place on May 21st, commencing with a procession through the village and we hope a summer fete will be held at the Cricket Club for the third consecutive year. There is also the possibility of the bypass run becoming an annual event and London Road being closed to traffic so celebrations for the Christmas lights switch on can be extended this year.

We understand that Living Ventures, owners of Gusto, are scheduled to open their third village restaurant at No.15 during the summer months, hopefully the other empty retail units on the high street will be occupied before too long and we won't be saying goodbye to our village post office.

I would like to wish you all a very happy and healthy new year and please do email me at [email protected] if you have any news you would like to share, a story you wish to be followed up or if you know of a local event we can help to promote.

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