News - Feb 2018 - Carr Lane Update
Carr Lane - The Rocky Road To Finding Funding
It’s been nearly two years since we started the campaign to repair Carr Lane but frustratingly things has yet to improve on the ground. Little did we realise on the outset that it would be such a hard, uphill slog (a bit like the Lane itself) although perhaps such foresight would have discouraged us from starting in the first place. On the plus side, we’ve learnt a lot and are still learning, we’ve made new friends, got involved with community and hopefully raised the profile of horse riders and equestrian access.
Carr Lane is “a very interesting problem” as the contractor on our first site visit euphemistically concluded. As anyone who has ventured up or down Carr Lane will know, it’s on a hill and there’s a high volume of natural running constantly present to challenge any renovation work proposed. We want to fund a sustainable, non-eroding fix, one that will withstand nature with a minimal amount of maintenance which is no easy feat.
One of the first problems we encountered was in obtaining quotes which took over 12 months. Although very sadly this was compounded by the tragic passing of specialist contractor, Ian Johnson at Terra Firma. Meeting Ian at the first site visit in October 2016, we really benefitted from his experience and huge enthusiasm for this type of renovation and he gave us real hope that we could succeed. He tragically lost his life in July 2017 and will be a big loss to the industry. When we eventually obtained quotes we found that the cost of repairing the Carr Lane to be far higher than we anticipated, even if we just consider repairing the worst 300 metres of the Lane we’re looking at a cost of between £30,000 and £45,000.
So far, we have raised over £800 towards the repair through our own events – demonstrations, tack sales, clear round evenings, Christmas carols and crowdfunding and for this we have our dedicated members to thank.
We have had successful applications for funding from the British Horse Society’s Paths for Communities Fund and the Pennine Townships but we’ve also had some rejections, so we’ve still got a way to go to reach the amount we need. Currently our Sports Lottery bid for the Community Asset Fund is in the balance. We have discovered that Carr Lane is unregistered with the Land Registry and therefore we don’t yet know who definitely owns the land. This information needs to be established before our bid will be fully considered and could quite possibly mean an uneventful end to our campaign.