Acomb Front Street improvements – report published

More flower tubs are promised

The Council is set to consider the latest report on the future of Acomb Front Street on 3rd July.

The area has had a boost in recent months with fewer empty properties and plans announced that would see several empty upper floors brought into residential use.

Nevertheless, the long-term future of the shopping area remains unpredictable, so investment of up to £100,000 is to be welcomed. Some of the fund will be spent in Haxby.

Back alleys need better refuse storage and cleaning

Part of the money is to be spent on bolstering existing activities with the aim of increasing “footfall”. These include additional grants to the ADAM arts festival and an improved Acomb Alive Christmas lights display.

Additional planters are planned for Front Street as are better signposts (wayfinding)

The Friends of Acomb Green have been allocated £5000 for “recycling area improvements” in the car park although it is unclear precisely what this would involve. (The bins could do with repainting although overfull containers, and litter drift, have been the main sources of complaint).

The Council could make a start by cleaning its noticeboards on a regular basis

A further £23,000 of the budget will be allocated later in the year.

The project has moved forward only slowly over the last 3 years.

The results of our survey undertaken in 2017 revealed that residents had clear priorities for the improvement of the area.

Residents priorities for Front Street 2017

Top of the list was the need for a level pedestrian surface across the whole of the precinct.

Achieving this would have required negotiations with the forecourt owners.

Little progress seems to have been made although consultants are now to be appointed to produce an economic masterplan for the area. They are expected to report in December 2018.

What’s on in York: Finding the Words with poet duo Headlines and special guest Carole Bromley

JUN Findingthe Words

York Explore Library :

Thu 28 Jun :

6.45pm – 7.45pm :

£3 or £2 with a York Card

Headlines Two prizewinning poets, Peter Wallis and Sally Festing, present poems about the head, both in its physical and mental aspects. With special guest Carole Bromley

How does repeated brain surgery impact on families? What if the patient has an identical twin? The answers come, in Andrew McMillan’s words, in poems that see “life as something tentative as well as tender”. Similarly, how can the effects of something like schizophrenia, bear on future generations? Family history and a cache of intimate letters suggest answers.

Sally Festing’s fifth collection will be published in 2019. Four prizes fed into Swimming Lessons, Salaams (Happenstance), Font, and Doors Opening (Oversteps) which followed journalism, radio plays, academic studies, biographies and other non-fiction books. Sally runs Saltmarsh Poetry.

Peter Wallis won publication of a pamphlet, Articles of Twinship, in the Bare Fiction Debut Poetry Collection Competition 2015, was shortlisted in the 2016 National Poetry Competition and longlisted in that of 2017. He is Submissions Editor for the U.K. charity “Poems in the Waiting Room”.

Carole Bromley is the Poetry Society’s York Stanza rep and runs poetry surgeries at York Explore. She has three books with Smith/Doorstop, A Guided Tour of the Ice House, The Stonegate Devil and a children’s collection, Blast Off. Carole is currently working on a sequence of poems about her recent experience of brain surgery and will be sharing some of those poems.

To book ticket please click here.