Nutbrook Trail grant cut threat averted!

Some of you may have met the two full-time Sustrans employees, Rob and Keith, who do the heavier jobs on the Nutbrook Trail, such as cutting back foliage and mending fences, etc. Throughout the year they actually cover a number of Sustrans-owned routes throughout the Midlands, mostly ex-railway lines. Sustrans receives a number of grants from local authorities to pay for this service. For the stretch of the Nutbrook Trail which lies within Erewash Borough they were receiving an annual grant which, as part of the cuts we hear a lot about these days, was going to cease from this new financial year. I heard about this from a Sustrans officer at the Liverpool group co-ordinators' conference few weeks ago. Some of our rangers did some lobbying of local councillors and I happened to mention the matter to the mayor when he opened the Long Eaton Environmental Fun Day recently. Soon afterwards we heard that the grant to Sustrans was not going to be cut after all. In fact, there had been no intention of cutting it; someone had made a mistake. I cannot say if our lobbying had had any effect but you can read all sides of the story in this link to the Ilkeston Advertiser (see right). I had hoped to give the reporter one of our own pictures to go with the article which appeared in the newspaper but thought it best to get individual rangers' permissions first and by that time it was too late to meet the deadline I had been given. The reporter told me that the paper had a stock of images of the Nutbrook Trail. It is unfortunate that the one he chose seems to concern the finding of a dead body on it, although I am assured that there was no mention of this in the newspaper article! Apologies to those who thought they had found fame by appearing in the local press!