Tynedale Community Bank - Tomorrow we will update locals on our community lending

What is it?
Tynedale Community Bank is the brainchild and product of the work of many locals but Lauren Langton has been the lynchpin of our efforts to provide a not for profit community bank that is one step above a credit union and more local and accommodating than a High Street Bank.
High street banks have closed hundreds of branches in recent years - many of them in the North East.
Our new Tynedale Community Bank is an old-style savings and loans business; it is similar to a credit union, but on a larger scale.
People want a community lender, based in their community, with the profits going back to the community. I am absolutely certain that large numbers of people will make the decision that some or all of their money should be in our community organisation rather than a multi-national bank based far away. Why would you want to bank with a bank in Frankfurt or Shanghai or London when you could trust your money to a community bank, which is helping your local community? Thus far we have had a lot of success.

How safe is my money?
Tynedale Community Bank is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, like the big-name high street banks, to ensure savings are protected as they would be anywhere else. Your money is fully regulated and protected. We are in partnership with the Prince Bishops Bank in Stanley, County Durham.

Taking on the pay day lenders: 
The bank will help fulfil the Church of England’s aim of ensuring people no longer have to rely on “payday lenders” which provide loans but charge massive interest rates. Payday lender Wonga currently advertises loans on its website with interest rates of more than 1,000%.
In 2013 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said the Church would put Wonga out of business by helping local financial co-operatives play a much bigger role in helping people with money problems.

Cross Party Support:
The Labour MP, North Durham MP Kevan Jones, who is involved with the Princes Bishop Community Bank in Stanley, County Durham, is also a supporter. Kevan and I disagree on several things but we are as one on why the Tynedale Bank is a wonderful thing. We have worked together hand in glove to make is work.
At our launch in November Kevan Jones said: “People tend to look at rural areas and think there is no poverty there, but there is financial poverty in these communities. That’s why a bank like this can make such a difference.”

Media / TV coverage:
This is the ITV take on our launch. 
http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/update/2015-11-06/archbishop-of-york-opens-northumberland-community-bank/

The Chronicle has done a piece on the launch last November here:
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/archbishop-york-open-new-community-10367546

Our website:
http://www.princebishopscommunitybank.org.uk/tynedale

Update Meeting:
We are in the Beaumont Hotel this Friday from 9.30-12. Lauren, Alastair, and other members of the team will outline what we have done, the nature of the deposits, the way in which we make loans, and how the bank works. You can also sign up for savings or a loan then.
Please come down and find out more.

A long walk around the Ponteland Green Belt

Today I spent 4 hours walking the countryside that makes up the Green Belt around Ponteland, studying what you can only see on foot. The stormy weather that had hit us so hard during the day abated to produce a sunlit windswept autumnal day; hikers, dog walkers, parents with kids and cyclists shrugged at each other as if to say - this is what we like when autumn comes. Aside from the green lungs that is the wonder of Ponteland Park it was a delight to wander the footpaths and bridleways that surround this community. I met many locals: like the Ponteland man, who works as a headteacher in a school in Newcastle. We walked the footpath back into town between the High School and the proposed site of the Banks developement. He described to me how when he returns from work in Newcastle every day the sight of the green fields on the outskits of his home town fills him with comfort and a sense of peace. It is this desire to prevent an urban sprawl, and an acknowledgement of the need to protect the green spaces around our town, that motivates the local campaigners who oppose the Banks and Lugano developments. In barely a month we will know our fate when Northumberland County Council produces its local developmeent plan, which includes the review of the green belt around Ponteland. It is our fervent wish that this green belt is protected. This is not to say that we, or I, am against development of appropriate housing. I have backed wholeheartedly the housing plans at the old Ponteland Pollice Headquarters site, which will provide hundreds of homes, and again campaigned for the several hundred more homes being built to a very high standard by Bellway, as we speak, at the Stannington Hospital site. This will more than adequately accomodate local needs. Every councillor, member of parliamnent and community activist knows that you only discover a place by walking the ground. By seeing things that are not there when we whizz by in a car. I discovered a lot today. Taking in the delights of the footpaths and cycleways, of byways like Fox Covert Lane and the old Railway you are seeing things that are not possible after overdevelopment. As I walked the hedgerows abundant with rosehips, wildflowers, and ageing blackberries I and my fellow travellers were in no doubt that the green belt is worth the struggle, worth the contest with the big beasts that are the huge developers at Lugano and Banks, and fervent in our hope that the Northumberland County Council see things the same way when the decision is made in October. My thanks to all the team of locals who have given up their time to help at http://www.pontelandgreenbelt.co.uk/ponteland-greenbelt-group/ and to all the locals who have put up their signs in their gardens and hedgerows. There has never been a local campaign like this - or not for four years at least - when we last pulled out all the stops to beat O2 mobile phone Company, who wanted to put a phone mast by the Darras Hall First School. They said that campaign was impossible to win as well!