Preston Pulse Issue 30

NEWS PULSE Preston Chorley&Leyland February 2020 3 THE NEWS IN BRIEF “You won’t find any pushy sales people here at Windoworld... just friendly, experienced and professional staff. Plus genuine rock bottom prices all year round.” Ronnie Orr Planting for the future VANDAL-HIT toilets on Berry Lane in Longridge have been reopened by the town council. They were closed in November last year after suffering £7,000 damage in the attack. LOSTOCK St Gerard Football Club have been given permission to create a new pitch at their Lostock Hall base by South Ribble Council, which owns the site in Wateringpool Lane. WORK to make Longridge a plastic-free town is gathering pace. The initiative is being driven by the Longridge Environment Group. GRIMSARGH WI group enjoyed entertainment from the Garstang Ukulele Band at their December meeting at the village hall. LEYLAND Trucks’ Helping Hand charity has donated £3,000 to the Rosemere Cancer Foundation at Royal Preston Hospital. It brings the amount the non-profit organisation has donated to the foundation to more than £30,000. CARDINAL Newman College in Preston has submitted plans to build a three-storey teaching block on Carr Street to accommodate students on the new T-Level courses. AN ambitious £5m project will plant more than half a million trees in Lanca- shire to reduce flooding, improve air quality and remove 100,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. Ribble Rivers Trust has launched a decade-long cam- paign to double the area of woodland across the county. Working with private and public sector supporters together with community- based groups and conserva- tion charities, the trust is aiming to create 100 kilome- tres of new or restored wood- land alongside the Ribble, Lune and Wyre and their tributaries. People of all ages will have the opportunity to get involved in the campaign – either by donating or taking part in hundreds of grass roots tree planting and habitat creation projects. Lancashire is one of the least wooded areas in the UK and the trust says a huge programme of tree-planting is critical if the county is to meet its obligations to reduce greenhouse gases and slow climate change. The initiative aims to raise £500,000 per year of fund- ing from public and private sector partners, grants, and the general public in order to raise £5m. Progress has already been made towards this year’s tar- get and this exciting initia- tive will continue to engage thousands of sponsors, volun- teers, schools and community groups. By 2030 the new waterside woodlands will extend across some 350 hectares of Lan- cashire – stretching from the Yorkshire border to the coast beyond Preston. Whalley Village Hall Com- mittee is one of the first com- munity groups to commit to funding the initiative with a £10,000 donation. Whalley was hit by cata- strophic flooding at Christ- mas 2015 and the village hall provided refuge for the fami- lies affected and was a focal point for the clear-up Committee chairman Mike Seery said: “We have been looking to invest our surplus in projects that benefit the entire village and planting trees to improve air qual- ity and strengthen natural flood resilience seems like an excellent investment from which the whole community will benefit. “£10,000 may seem like a lot of money for a small, com- munity-based charity, but the committee was unanimous its support for the scheme. “We see this as a long-term investment that will pay dividends for the people of Whalley for at least the next 100 years.” Ribble Rivers Trust direc- tor Jack Spees said: “There is huge appetite from com- munities across the Ribble catchment to do their bit to tackle climate change, in- crease biodiversity and con- tribute to natural flood risk management. “By working together, we can achieve so much more than alone and Whalley vil- lage hall’s generous donation demonstrates the kind of leadership and vision that we hope others will replicate.” Keith Ashcroft, Environ- ment Agency area director for Cumbria and Lancashire, said: “Half a million new trees across these catch- ments will have an enormous impact on the quality, the health of the landscape – and how people interact with it. “This ambitious scheme will improve the county’s natural ability to slow wa- ter through the catchments, which in turn will reduce soil erosion, improve water qual- ity and improve the resil- ience to climate change.”