It’s official, according to The Times newspaper, Folkestone is the
fifth “coolest place” to live in Britain. I know what you are
thinking; they’ve marked the town four places to low. Whilst these
kinds of surveys and lists are a bit if fun, it’s great to see our
area receiving some positive national publicity which recognises the
changes that are taking place.
There was more good news last week when we welcomed the Sports
Minister, Hugh Robertson, to officially open the new sports centre at
Cheriton Road in Folkestone; the ‘Three Hills Sports Park’. This
£7million development, which has been supported by the Roger De Haan
Charitable Trust, has created a new home for the Folkestone Cricket
Club and the Folkestone Optimists Hockey Club. As well as providing
state of the art facilities for these sports, the park also includes a
new centre for netball. I hope that people of all ages will benefit
from these fantastic facilities, and enjoy using the stunning new
buildings. These new facilities could also make it possible for Kent
County Cricket club to return to play some of their matches in the
town, something which we would all welcome.
Last Friday I joined the Leader of Kent County Council, Paul Carter,
and the Leader of Shepway Council, Robert Bliss, for a business
meeting held at Lydd Airport and focused on creating new jobs for
Romney Marsh. The event was well attended by local businesses and the
local elected representatives for the area. The announcement was made
at this meeting about the creation of a new fund, called the ‘Marsh
Million’, where the County Council and Magnox, who manage Dungeness A
power station, have made £1milllion available to support businesses
and help create new jobs. Romney Marsh businesses can also benefit
from the £35million regional growth fund for East Kent. You can find
out more about this fund through its website www.growforiteastkent.com
. The fund has already made an interest free loan of over £1million to
HV Wooding’s the engineering firm in Hythe, which will create new jobs
in their expanded production facility.
Tourism is already an important part of the economy, not just for
Romney Marsh, but all of our area, and investment and new ideas to
support this should be welcomed. One such idea is the creation of a
new cycle path along the coast from Folkestone to Dungeness, and
linking up with the existing paths along the Royal Military Canal.
This new path would create a circuit for riders and make it easier for
them to explore the coast and the inland attractions, like the
historic Romney Marsh churches. The Shepway Cycle Form has collected a
petition supporting this proposal and last week I presented it on
their behalf, to representatives from all of our local councils. It
was good to hear of their support and I hope that this is something we
can all work on together to benefit the whole community.
I was also inspired to last week to meet Christian, a former soldier
who is walking anti-clockwise around the coast of Britain to raise
money for ‘Help for Heroes’. He took a break at Hythe Ranges to tell
us about his journey which started in Blackpool, and will take his two
years and 6,500 miles to complete. You can follow him online at
www.christianaroundbritain.co.uk