over town's salt mine crisis

PROMISES, promises - that's all we ever hear from Vale Royal Borough Council on the crisis surrounding the disused Northwich salt mines.

Six months ago the council spin doctors and the local MP Mike Hall called a press conference to congratulate themselves on "securing" funding to tackle the problem.

Everything was cut and dried, the money was on the way.

The anxieties of the past five years were behind us and the headlines indicated that the local press had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.

The reality is that not a penny has been forthcoming. Indeed we are only at the application stage, pitching for £28 million alongside other areas with mining legacies, e.g. Bath, and despite what our local Labour politicians have been telling us, the change in government has to date not made the slightest difference.

NORTHWICH

OBSERVER

Name and address supplied.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.