N-EAST ENGLAND REVIVAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 January 1938, Page 11

N-EAST ENGLAND REVIVAL

COST MORE THAN £10,000,000. Changing the face of North-East England is being effected at a cost of more than £10,000,000. Private enterprise alone accounts for well over £3,000,000; public works schemes over £4,000,000; the NorthEastern Housing Association (sponsored by the Government to ease the financial burden of municipal housing by* local authorities) has entered into contracts totalling £1,600,000 and representing 4378 houses throughout the area; and the Government-fostered Team Valley Trading Estate of 700 acres is now making excellent pro-, gross.

In addition the reconstruction and widening of the Great North Road through Durham and Northumberland has been in progress for some years and still continues at a cost running well into six figures, aud the 5J miles of road from Newcastle to Tynemouth is to be doubled in width, with cycle trucks on each side. Newcastle’s £35,000 municipal airport is now’ fully equipped with directional radio and night-landing equipment, and municipal aerodromes are planned for the Hartlepools and a group of towns, including Sunderland and South Shields.

The public works include the recently opened £550,000 Burnhope reservoir for County Durham; the £500,000 electrification of the railway on the south bank of the Tyne; £1,350,000 for acquisition and re-equipment of Tyne Dock by the Tyne Improvement Commissioners; £200,000 for a fish quay and considerable extension of port facilities at Sunderland. ■ In sport a new £50,000 company has this season opened a. stadium near Newcastle, and in addition to plans for a pleasure pier at Whitley Bay, other seaside resorts —including Seaburn and Tynemouth—are increasing amenities for holiday-makers. Everywhere private enterprise and local authorites are co-operating with a goodwill. Newcastle Corporation is building a £60,000 quay’ alongside a £400,000 flour mill now nearing completion. The Tyne Improvement Commission have built a £17,000 quay for a new £250,000 plywood factory and a £40,000 quay for the expanding trade with Norway. In recent months Messrs. Duncan Long opened a £600,000 set of coke ovens on Teeside, where a new clothing factory ultimately designed to employ some 5000 people was formally opened by Lord Feversham a few weeks ago. The £1,000,000 Jarrow steelworks, now assured to the hardest hit town in North-East England, has not yet taken shape, but the scheme is in hand.

The coal-treatment plants at Seaton Carew, Seaham Harbour and Heb-burn-on-Tyne account between them for over £570,000. And there are many smaller enterprises—companies of £5OOO to £20,000 introducing new industries to the North-East and providing valuable employment. The North-East to-day. with busy shipyards and mines, engineering and electrical firms employing record numbers of people and the smaller industries sharing in (he present prosperity, presents a picture very different from that of a few years ago.