The start of the Cartergate development marks the first stage in the planned overhaul of the town centre.

New designs show the vast array of planned facilities, including offices, a health club, a hotel, shops, cafes and two landscaped squares, but this will not be the only change to the town, which will also include the Wharf Retail

 A development on Garth Lane,  has also been approved, but funding has not yet been secured. 

 Further significant changes have also been funded by the Urban Renaissance Programme  - the same group as the one behind the Cartergate development.

The programme is a partnership between North East Lincolnshire Council, the Greater Grimsby Renaissance Partnership (GGRP) and Yorkshire Forward. Under the scheme, Yorkshire Forward has already funded improvements to street lighting and the St James’ Church extension and will fund the renovated underpass and improve Cartergate car park. The current demolition work will mean some traffic restrictions. The footpath in front of the buildings on Chantry Lane will be partially closed, but the underpass will remain open.

Michele Cusack, regeneration director at NELC, said: “We are delighted that work is getting under way on the Cartergate site and believe it will, with careful stewardship from the council, be a development of great importance and merit to the whole community.”

Another football academy has been launched in the Yarborough Ward. 

As reported in the Grimsby Telegraph, the schemes, supported by Sports Lincs, have been launched all over North East Lincolnshire to tackle anti- social behaviour.

The Freshney Green academy, at Kingston Gardens, has just opened and is organised by Humberside Police’s Pc Nick Bunker to complement the popular sessions held at Yarborough School on Thursday nights from 6.00pm.

PC Bunker said that taking over the green every Friday night will help reduce anti-social behaviour in the area and give youngsters something to do.

The academy has been supported by Alec Leonard, a co-ordinator for The Richmond Road, Ashtree Avenue, Waterworks Cottages and Kingston Gardens (RAWK) Neighbourhood Watch group. Mr Leonard (70), of Richmond Avenue, said: “I think it’s a grand idea. When we first started RAWK a couple of years ago, the area was rife with anti-social behaviour.  As recently as a couple of months ago, we had youths going around smashing car windows.  We have been pretty active in trying to stop those sort of things and we have been quite successful. “Two of those joining the academy were Callum Clixby (11) and Thomas Ward (11), who live in the Freshney Green area.Callum said: “I’m here because I enjoy football and I would like to make it big when I grow up.” Thomas said the reason he joined was to keep fit. He added: “If I wasn’t here for this I would still be out playing football.”The academy will be held at Kingston Gardens every Friday night from 6.00pm. There is also another academy which is held each Friday at Western School from 6.00pm, and another which takes place every Thursday at

Work to clean up Grimsby’s cenotaph is now complete.As reported, restoration work on the war memorial at Nuns Corner has been carried out over the last month, after acid pollution combined with age took its toll, and a number of cracks also appeared on the memorial

The go-ahead for the much-needed spruce-up was given by North East Lincolnshire Council and members of the Royal British Legion earlier in the year, but bad weather temporarily hampered the restoration.

Last month, conditions were deemed perfect and specialist stonemason and restoration expert Mark Stafford used the latest low-pressure washing techniques to clean the memorial, and then repointed the memorial using traditional materials.

The £3,875 cost of the project is being split between the council and the War Memorials Trust.

Alan Fletcher, the council’s parks and open spaces manager, said: “The cleaning and renovation work of the Cenotaph at Nuns’ Corner Grimsby is now complete.  The work was carried out by a stonemasonry and conservation company which specialises in structures of this nature on a national level.  The programme of work was carried out under ideal weather conditions, removing the algae and dirt that had built up over the years.  Now restored to its former glory, it is anticipated that no major cleaning work will be required for a minimum of five years.”

The monument was originally constructed after the First World War.  A number of further inscriptions have since been added to commemorate local people who died in subsequent wars. The memorial is now used every year for remembrance parade services.

 The restoration was supported by the Royal British Legion which helped the council by carrying out preliminary investigations.

What is Faceless Britain?

Faceless Britain quite simply refers to the challenges experienced by millions of ordinary people every day in accessing public services. With every year that goes by, more and more services that used to offer face to face contact are being replaced by systems that are centralised, remote and inhuman. We are seeing the progression of an unaccountable state, creating increasingly remote systems that are divorced from the people they are supposed to serve.This is evident in many different areas such as:

• The difficulty of getting through to a benefits helpline
• The closure of local Post Offices and the access to government and financial services that goes with them.
• The maladministration of the social fund
• The introduction of ID cards instead of putting more police on the streets.

Driving this agenda is the Government’s preoccupation with cost-cutting in order to deliver so-called “efficiency savings.” But in many cases Labour’s erosion of public services is not even saving the taxpayer money. Despite reporting savings of over £20 billion in the past three years alone, Brown has clearly forgotten to account for the billions of pounds that have been wasted on failed IT projects, or for the cost of mobile phone bills to Government contact centres that run to hundreds of millions every year, or for the expense and inconvenience to every single person who has to travel a little further on the bus to their local Post Office or Jobcentre Plus just to speak to someone face to face. And of course so many of these problems are made much worse because all too often the people who have to pay the most are the ones that can afford it the least.

How you can help the Lib Dems to get rid of Faceless Britain

We want to hear from you - whether you have a story about Faceless Britain in action, or a more positive story about where things are working well, perhaps in the private or voluntary sector. Similarly, if you have thoughts on proposals that would help to reverse Faceless Britain, we would be very pleased to hear from you.Please post your comments on this website, or email us with your ideas at harrisonja@parliament.ukA copy of our full consultation paper (PDF, 154kb) is available to download from this website.

After taking the information and views on board from all these processes, we plan to produce a spokesperson’s paper and motion, to be debated at Conference in Autumn 2008.Thank you for your help.