Newcastle City Council has published its plans to give more space to customers visiting Gosforth High Street, to allow remaining shops to open safely and comply with the Government's physical distancing rules. Read more [...] Enabling Businesses to Open Safely on Gosforth High Street
Newcastle City Council has published its plans to give more space to customers visiting Gosforth High Street, to allow remaining shops to open safely and comply with the Government's physical distancing rules. Read more [...] 
Sunday 10 November 2019 was Remembrance Sunday. As is traditional, local cadets and scouts paraded down Gosforth High Street and into Gosforth Central Park for a short service and to observe a two-minute silence in memory of members of the armed forces that lost their lives in the two world wars and later conflicts.
The Remembrance Day Service in Gosforth Central Park offers an opportunity to reflect and mourn for the past, and it is also an opportunity to pause and to examine the present. 
We now have the official air pollution measurements for 2018 and the air we breathe in Newcastle still hasn't met the legal limit that should have been achieved in 2005. 
In 2015, at SPACE for Gosforth's launch event we asked local residents, what do they like about the High Street and what could be improved? The Your Streets - Your Views survey gave us an opportunity to revisit this to see whether, three years later, these concerns were widely shared.
At the Your-Streets Your-Views survey feedback meeting we asked residents for ideas on how to build a better Gosforth. In particular: Opportunities for more trees and greenery.
Routes to school and how to make them safer; Suggestions to reduce traffic on busy residential streets; and Locations or changes crossings on main roads. 
Newcastle City Council have released the Air Quality Feasibility Study that will be used for its forthcoming consultation. Whatever the final plan that is chosen, it must by law meet air quality limits within the shortest possible timescale. The question for the consultation therefore is how should that be achieved. 
Newcastle City Council are seeking your views on a proposed crossing to be sited on Salters Road. You can access the original consultation, which closed on 23 December 2018, on the Let's Talk website. The proposal is to remove the zebra crossing and replace it with a puffin crossing outside of the Spar shop.
Update 3/9/2019: The Council approved the original proposal without modification.
Update 21/1/2022: The Council have installed the crossing (see bottom of blog).
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In our last blog we shared the results of the 2017 Council air quality monitoring, showing that Gosforth High Street had the highest recorded nitrogen dioxide (NO2) air pollution in the whole of Newcastle.
In this blog, we take a look at three key questions that came up in discussion following release of the 2017 air pollution figures. 
The Council has just released its Air Quality Annual Status Report 2018 and it is not looking good for Gosforth High Street. We had expected that the 2016 reading of 51μg/m3 for Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) was a one-off due to the roadworks at the junction with Salters Road, but in 2017 the figure had increased again to 59μg/m3.. Both are substantially higher than the legal maximum of 40μg/m3. 
Every year the Council is required to provide an annual status report covering its Air Quality Management Areas (AQMA) in the City Centre and in Gosforth. Figures have just been released for 2016 and, contrary to the longer term trend, there were significant increases in pollution across many sites in Gosforth and in the City Centre.