May 2014
New Site commences at Dymock!
H&G volunteers lay a land drain along the chapel boundary.
A very long drawn out process on the legal and planning side is finally moving towards fruition. All the pre-commencement conditions were at last discharged by the Council in March allowing the housing development to start in due course.
The Canal and other aspects have been going through a near constant value engineering process to ensure all aspects of the site can be developed cost effectively. This has required considerably more support than originally envisaged from our engineers Tony Gee & Partners and was made more challenging than normal as our engineer, Thomas Ashworth, has been working on a major road scheme at Pulpit Rock on the shore of Loch Lomond in Scotland and was also flown down to the Dawlish Rail rebuild to help on that! So our great thanks to the team, and particularly Director Austin Weltman, for the continuing support from the Stonehouse office.
Our thanks for their support and co-operation also go to the members of the Western Way Chapel who have kindly given consent for us to extend the Canal embankment across their boundary so that both our sites will be level rather than a huge gully being created between us. This agreement will considerably improve the look and ease of maintenance of the completed site and enables the Canal to go virtually up to the boundary gaining us another 10m or so in water.
Canal Trust volunteers made a start on site in April by saving the daffodils that would otherwise be buried under the new Canal embankment and replanting them in an area which will not be disturbed. We will then replant these on the finished Canal embankment in the future. While on site they also cleared the Chapel boundary and installed a land drain on that boundary in preparation.
We hope to be on site in June installing over an acre of geogrid on top of the existing surface to reinforce the ground prior to our long term partners EMG/Keyway commencing the construction of the embankment itself. As always the only way you will hear the latest news is to sign up to our free ‘Count me in’ email updates.
