So far the poll has some 75% against the project to create a museum, workshop and car-park for 250 cars just past St Anne's Church on Old Barrow Rd.
 
50% of respondents are totally against the project and 25% have said that they might support it if the project site was moved from the current proposal's geographical position. For example, across the other side of the road. So 75% don't want it where the Railway Trust want to site it.

Have your say

" As Chairman of Haverthwaite Parish council, I have to say that because we have not received any planning application, or seen any concrete proposals, from FRT, it is not possible to make an official Parish Council comment.
 
However, as a parishioner of Haverthwaite, and a member of St Anne's PCC, I do have comments to make.
 
At first glance the plans of FRT seem reasonable, BUT, do we want a museum? Most people think not. Do we need another community centre? Most people think not. Do we need another cafe in the village, attracting even more traffic? I think not.
 
I wonder if the whole thing is just a pipe-dream of Tim Owen's. Apart from anything else, the scheme is planned for totally the wrong place.
 
If you speak to people at the station, they are reasonably happy with the parking situation, and only experience severe problems a few times per year, so for whom is the real benefit of this plan?
 
Why was no-one from the railway at the meeting?
 
This is where we turn from pipe-dream to smoke screen.
 
I detect the finger of the Forestry Commission in this particular pie. They are determined to have a shuttle bus running from Haverthwaite to Grizedale, despite the opinions of the residents of Haverthwaite, and have already put the shuttle bus service out to tender to start from 2008.
 
Where are these mythical people to park their cars when they take the shuttle bus to Grizedale? I leave you to guess. Why should Haverthwaite be used to solve Grizedale's problems?
 
There is another problem with the funding. FRT is a charity, and can attract grants, which can then be used to assist a private firm - guess which?
 
There are residents of Haverthwaite desperate for allotments; the church is running out of burial spaces: would these not be better uses for the field next to the Church?
 
Christina Watkinson"

What do you think - tell us by voting on our straw poll

Following an interview on Radio Cumbria this morning Tim Owen of Furness Railway trust again confirmed that the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Steam Railway site would be taking on the Grizedale Forest park and ride bus in the New Year.
 
Surely the Park and Ride on top of the existing traffic to the venue will only increase road usage and reduce the availability of parking for the L&H Railway customers, and not just out of the main season.
 
He also said that the project would mean that Haverthwaite would become a Park & Ride for the rest of the Lakes, although not in so many words. The new project proposal means that a small village will have to put up with potentially over 1000 plus vehicle movements a day along a narrow road which for 40 years has been used by the community for parking and events since what used to be the main road was blocked at the far end when the dual carriageway was built.
 
To say that the new scheme could accommodate parking for the Church, Church Hall and the local Pub, the Anglers Arms is not really good enough. The scheme would turn that part of Haverthwaite into something like Greenodd used to be before the new road by-passed the village. The only beneficiaries being the Railway Trust, Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway and the Windermere Steamers. Jobs created locally - probably Nil, because the Trust does not have any paid employees and the L&H Railway would only be able to take on a couple of casual or part time staff.
 
So Who would benefit?
 
The short answer is: -
 
The Furness Railway Trust who would get their expansion plans paid for by and large from the public purse!
 
The Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway who would be able to devote most of their existing parking to coaches and shunt cars onto the overspill.
 
The Windermere Steamer company which is not in Haverthwaite or Backbarrow but at Lakeside
 
The businesses in Windermere, Bowness and Ambleside
 
As for Haverthwaite and Backbarrow; the Anglers Arms may win some business if the cafe at the railway is full, but apart from that very little. You see we don't have any tourist attractions or village centre which would be of interest to tourists - nor do we necessarily want them.
 
We want to grow our technology businesses and increase local wages and the economy.
 
The fact is that there is no need to come over this side of the road at all!
 
Use the northern side of the A590 and link to the field at Lane Ends. This would give better access and egress for all the Railway's visitors and for emergency vehicles.
 
We are not against progress in this area, but progress does not mean that everyone has to suffer by poor and inadequate concepts and bad planning. Think Again!
 
The last thing this community wants is to become a Car Park for the benefit of the rest of the Lake District and in return gain little or no benefit to us locally!
 
Change the location of the project and you will probably get all the village's around here behind your plan!

What do you think - tell us by voting on our straw poll

See what Furness Railway Trust have said in their press releases

The meeting called by The Furness Railway Trust was well attended yesterday evening by local residents.
 
The proposal on developing the field past the Church on the right of Old Barrow Rd (formerly Kendal Rd) was outlined well by Tim Owen of Furness Railway Trust and he explained that this project was in its early stages. So far they had spent around £2,000 on studies and consultancies to look at the idea and he explained that if the project went ahead it would benefit the Local community. Tim said that this was a big project possibly in the region of £5 million overall.
 
The Proposal was to take a field and with funding from various bodies turn it into a car park for the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway which had problems throughout the year in housing its visitor's cars, and to provide the FRT with an engineering workshop and possibly a museum.

There were major concerns from the floor about the impact it would have on local residents and businesses. Tim said he expected local businesses to benefit from the project, however, when pushed and questioned the main beneficiaries turned out to be Furness Railway Trust, Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway and the Windermere Steamers.
 
The general opinion was that most of the other businesses around the area would see little no benefit and in fact would actually find the proposal would cause major access and egress problems, not to mention parking problems for the local pub, church, church hall etc.
 
There was little that Tim could do to allay fears in this area and he said that it had all come about because he had been asked to accept the Grizedale Bus terminus at the Railway in the New Year, and to try to resolve the problems of cars parking on local roads and blocking them during their peak periods at the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway.
 
Taking the Park and Ride for the Grizedale Bus would in itself add to the parking problem that the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway already has and not just in the high season!
 
The visitors now using the road to travel to Grizedale will have the opportunity to leave their cars at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway car park thus denying places to L&HRW visitors.
 
Haverthwaite and Backbarrow do not want to become parking lots for the rest of the Lake District!

It was acknowledged that the plan had not been thought through as many opinions had to be taken into consideration, not least of these being the local residents hence this meeting to take soundings and bring in ideas on how it could work.

Locating a car park that held some 200 cars, a museum and workshop was seen as unacceptable by many and most concerns were to do with traffic movements of 500 or more per day along a road that was
 
a) not wide enough and
 
b) used by the community for parking during births, marriages and funerals at the local Parish Church of St Anne's. The Anglers Arms customers also used the road to park as did residents.

Whilst people had no objections to local businesses growing a significant number were very concerned that this would make the area worse not better and the benefit to the community would be virtually nil.
 
Others said that they could not give any opinion on the project as there was nothing to see or discuss and that more needed to be put on the table in respect of where, what, how and when the project would appear.
 
Everyone had concerns about the road and traffic.
 
There were also concerns about the whole process in as much as - why was a charity planning to put together a project to benefit itself in a small way and two other companies in a big way, those being the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway (which the Trust took many opportunities to stress that there was no connection between it and the private family run business which was Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway) and the other main beneficiary - the Windermere Steamers who are not actually located in Haverthwaite or Backbarrow but simply fed by train links from Haverthwaite to Lakeside.
 
It as eventually resolved to call another meeting in the spring when ideas would perhaps be fleshed out more.
 
The current owner of the field in question stressed that he had not decided to sell the field for the development and may not.
 
The choice of field was very unfortunate! The reason given was that other fields did not meet their criteria. The field at Lane Ends was given as a better alternative but geology and traffic was sited as the main reasons for not using this field.
 
Perhaps there is a load of rock in the way, but that rock was moved for the dual carriageway when it was built, so it can be moved again - than all the site would be on the same side of the road.
 
Points brought up were noted.
 
Tim stressed through the meeting that if the project did go ahead in the future, they would be hoping for considerable grants from a number of bodies including the North West Development Agency which wanted to see the development of Sustainable Tourism in the area and Cumbria in general.
 
The truth of the matter is that in our opinion we do not want to see more tourism in this area, what we want to see is investment in new skills, new high wage economy businesses who had clean working practices and products or services.
 
Tourism does little for the community here as a whole! All tourism does for the county outside the main tourist attractions is promote and sustain a low wage economy, and it's the same with agriculture.
 
We are not proposing that we get rid of or don't support tourism or agriculture, what we are saying is that we need to be thinking differently and bigger to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
 
What we need to do is provide well planned and landscaped offices and workshops with "easy in" - "easy out" leases for small local companies who are involved in the new technologies and who would generate a high wage value economy.
 
Also, affordable housing for them and their families. predominantly for rent or shared ownership in a way that which does not see them sold off at a later date to some rich whiz-kid from the south who may have happened to have made a killing in banking or benefited from the house price rises in that area and now wants to have a holiday home or investment property to let at rents local youngsters can't afford.
 
The new development at the old Ironworks site is certainly not aimed at local small businesses - this is plainly visible to anyone who prices the new buildings.
 
Prices range from £110,000 to over £400,000 with rental prices being far over the prices available in Ulverston and Barrow. The whole project in our opinion was a cop out by the District Council and now our community is stuck with it.
 
£5 Million is not a big project for a community like the Leven Valley - what we need are loads of £5 million projects to deliver sustainability to ALL our communities and businesses.
 
Perhaps we are getting a car museum, but in reality this is a 70's attraction that has been moved, we believe, because it no longer had a benefit to Holker Hall. Now were are stuck with it on a site that could have been used for small business accommodation and rented housing for locals to stop our children having to move away!
 
FRT's Idea - Our opinion - It's a reasonable Idea, but wrong place and wrong project which is not aimed high enough to benefit the majority of the community!
 
What do your think?

What do you think - tell us by voting on our straw poll

Vote on Furness Railway Trust's Proposal

Click on a button to vote. This is an unscientific straw poll which will only allow you to vote once. It will help to give a flavour of support or resistance to the project.

If that field could be used for something else what do you think could be of benefit to the community? We favour Allotments!

Finally, there would be more to gain for the community if the field or part of it was allowed to become allotments. We could then grow our own foods and not have to worry about food miles.
 
The Parish Council has received a number of request for allotments but does not have the land to rent out.

If you have a comment about the Proposed Project for Furness Railway Trust feel free to express it and we will publish it as long as it is not Insulting to any individual involved, it is constructive and does not incite any illegal act.
 
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