Friends of Redcar Inaugural Meeting

Friends of Redcar held their first meeting today in front of 30 people. We'd like to thank Fred Brunskill and the Zetland Lifeboat Museum for allowing us to hold our first meeting here. 

In time we shall publish the minutes and house them on our new Streetclub page which we're trialling as a place to keep us (and you) organised :)

Carl Quartermain, Fred Brunskill and Natalie Williams

The main crux of this meeting was to formally establish roles for Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer. This was achieved with the help of John Colling from Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council who kindly came along to help us officiate. We also created a committee of 12 members and agreed on our constitution. 

The main discussion points were related to;

• the reasons why we wanted to create this particular community action group
• the concerns surrounding Redcar beach
• the concerns regarding the Regent cinema
• the concerns regarding fracking in Kirkleatham
• efforts to approach similar groups in Redcar
• gaining knowledge and access to funding
• Plans, ideas and events

Thank you to all who attended and for the enthusiasm behind our discussions. We hope to make Redcar a better place by leading from the community. Join us and help bulk up our numbers. The more voices the harder it is not to listen. Our next litter pick is on Sunday 1st September at 10am starting at the Zetland Park roundabout. See you there.

A short film of Redcar Beach August 2013

Redcar beach in 2013 has been woeful. Not only have we lost an incredible amount of sand but we also have building debris all along the new coastal defences.

Limiting our tourism by allowing our beach to become this eyesore has a huge impact on our local economy. The depletion of sand is due to dredging on Teesmouth (See story here). In Scarborough they import sand if necessary. How can we prevent depletion?

When day trippers, visitors and holiday makers get to spend a day on Redcar beach this is what we are providing for them. This is the story they'll take home. Take notice and shout about it. There is little reason for Redcar to be so different to Scarborough. Lack of vision, promotion, marketing, events, infrastructure, investment....effort.


Below is a short video from our You Tube channel We made this to highlight some of our concerns purely about the beach and the negative visual impact it brings to tourism in our town.

Poor trade due to lack of visitors directly affects local businesses and our economy and feeds back into every home through local taxes. Sit up and help us change attitudes. There are a number of videos on our facebook page. Subscribe because we will keep updating you of our endeavours and efforts to raise awareness and our victories. For more images check our pinterest page

We will get funding to help us but need physical, practical and financial support. We need to change this.

 Join us at our inaugural meeting on the 21st August 2013

Friends of Redcar first Beach Action Group Aug 2013

Carl Quartermain and Natalie Williams created "Friends of Redcar" to raise awareness and to promote actions over issues that have a negative visual impact on Redcar. Today saw the birth of "Beach Action Group" as a community project to remove litter and  building debris believed to be from the development work. It is our hope to raise awareness to the building rubble as much as it is to stop littering.

The newly formed community action group hit the beach at Coatham at 8am. A modest turnout of 15 had gone to the beach with the intention of uncovering building debris left over from the coastal defences building work.

We were joined by numerous residents such as Tracy Leathard and family, Ian Elcoate of Tad Web Solutions, as well as politicians such as Ian Swales MP for Lib Dems and Anna Turley the Labour and Co-operative candidate. All stayed for 2 hours.

After two hours of work between them they had shifted 4.5 tons of brick and concrete as well as 30 bags of litter.We like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along and helped out on a wet morning and thanks also to the neighbourhood team of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council for providing gloves, bags, staff and the tractor and trailer.

The event was covered by the Evening Gazette and Coastal View newpapers, BBC Tees and Look North. More of these are going to be planned along with fresh ideas for next year to make them more interactive and fun. For more images check our pinterest page

It's our intention to contact Birse Coastal to come back and clear up the mess they left. We shall also be pushing the council to do the same. However as the work has been signed off we doubt very much that they will be back. This has opened up the question - Should local residents be involved with future building work, whether that is the demolition or construction, to ensure the work area is left how WE would want it?

Join us at our Inaugural meeting on the 16th August at 6.30pm at the Zetland Museum.

Friends of Redcar New Logo

Today we got our new logo courtesy of E-Strands. We think it demonstrates perfectly what we're all about. So what do you think?

Social Media - We're all over it

Over the past week we have launched on various platforms across social media. Below are the links of all the places you can find us: Just click on the image.