The next Open Meeting will take place on WEDNESDAY 10 June 2015  in the Lounge at The Athenaeum Club, Church Street, Hartlepool with a 7.15pm start.  Please note that the meeting does not take place on our usual Thursday meeting day nor in the usual room. The room will be available to us from 6.30pm and we will be welcome to use the bar from that time until it closes between 10.30pm and 11.00pm.

Our Visiting Guest Speaker  will be Mr Steve Payne, Strategic Transport Manager, Tees Valley Unlimited.

Although, of course, Mr Payne will be welcome to present his overview of matters of mutual interest to Tees Valley Unlimited and ourselves, our Chairman is hoping to discuss Mr Payne’s role as our area’s LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership) contact and the influence various of our regional bodies has in the wider corridors of power in the north and nationally.

All are welcome  at the above meeting. To access the Athenaeum ring the doorbell, The lounge is on the right at the top of the stairs

We are pleased to be able to record that the Coastline timetable from 17th May 2015 incorporates two of the matters on which we have been lobbying.

1) Sunday services between Middlesbrough & Nunthorpe are now hourly throughout the day. The Sunday only service to & from Darlington as a result now terminates at Hartlepool again & sees the bay platform back in use at least for the midday train. Now we need the service to be extended back to Nunthorpe to serve James Cook, and to continue later into the evening.

2) The last northbound Monday – Friday train (2110 from Middlesbrough) has been extended through to Hexham – it previously terminated at Newcastle just three minutes before the departure of the last Tyne Valley train