So, last night, we did it, with a lot of help from a lot of friends!
**26-01-2023 COUNCIL VOTES UNANIMOUSLY TO WITHDRAW PLANNING APPLICATION LA06/2020/0530F
"Plans for a 7 million pound upgrade to the coastal path between Hollywood and Donaghadee have been scrapped. It follows a meeting on Thursday night with Ards and North Down Council, who voted overwhelmingly to shelve the project. Crowds gathered outside Bangor City Hall ahead of that council meeting last night in protest against the move. Now a working group will be set up to decide the next steps."**
The For Another Path group want to thank everyone who shared our petition, everyone who wrote to their councillors, everyone who spread the word in any way whatsoever, because the success of persuading the Council to vote UNANIMOUSLY to stop this clearly unpopular plan could never have been achieved without the massive public outcry, demonstrating how people feel about this beautiful coastal area.
It's not a route, it's a destination. People come here from far and wide, from all over the world in fact, to get away from the urban trappings of concrete and steel, and steep their lungs and their eyes in nature. They come by foot, with dogs, with kids, in wheelchairs, on bikes... they come for a variety of reasons, but they share a love for this area that brings them back again and again.
Now that we've persuaded our councillors that this place is a precious gem, we need to consolidate the protection of this place, welcoming sensitive fixings or upgrades to little bits here and there that need it, but preserving the winding, meandering character that seems to be the unique appeal of this wild coastline.
And we need to engage as many of the public as are willing, with the new Working Groups that we're told will be established.
Our petition had two aims, 1. Withdraw the planning application, and 2. Use the funding to design and deliver another path, a greenway in a more popular location to support cycling, a great choice of transport for Active Travel.
Objective one is achieved, let's help our borough council to deliver the second.
Listening to last night's speeches and debate, it was very clear how much impact you all made, by your collective actions. So many of them talked of the broken trust in the planning process, and the need to rebuild it. If this movement has achieved such a surprising, unanimous decision by our elected representatives in such a short time, let's now go forward and harness this wave of democratic energy to rebuild more representative mechanisms between the council, and ourselves, the people they are meant to represent.
Who's up for that? We mean to keep going in some format as a movement for change. Please keep in touch via foranotherpath@gmail.com and our website, foranotherpath.org, and search For Another Path on Facebook. Together we can make a change, we've proved that.
The For Another Path Team.