Cheshire East Council’s highways teams will be working around the clock this winter to keep the Borough’s roads safe for motorists.

The end of October marked the start of the winter maintenance season in Cheshire East. Duty officers are working to dispatch gritters to treat the Borough’s road network in response to any winter weather conditions.

Cheshire East highways teams treat a total of 1,090km of primary roads across the Borough’s network. Gritting takes place on a precautionary basis to stop ice forming and snow is dealt with using specialist equipment such as snow blowers, all-terrain quad bikes with attachable snowploughs and towable gritters for footways and roads with restricted access.

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Three Alsager schools have been involved in a project with Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service to display artwork at Alsager Fire Station conveying key fire safety messages.

Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service worked with the schools, Cranberry Academy, Pikemere Primary and Highfields Primary, encouraging the children to draw a variety of pictures to represent key fire safety messages. A safety advocate went into each of the schools and delivered a talk around road and fire safety to give the children the information they needed to produce the artwork ideas. These drawings were then given to a design company to use alongside key safety messages to create the five panels. [Read more…]

Alsager Station has again been put in the spotlight at the annual East Midlands Trains (EMT) Best Stations Awards.

This year, Alsager took the Community Partnership Award in recognition of the involvement of schoolchildren in improving the station gardens and commemorating World War 1, and individual projects with the station volunteers like station twinning with Rose Hill, In Bloom and a new garden celebrating 100 years of the Women’s Institute.

This year’s Alsager Christmas Lights Switch On event will take place on Sunday 29th November from 4-8pm.

Come along to enjoy a huge range of festive entertainment, from Band’s Santa’s Grotto, performances by Crewe Brass,The Can’t Sing Choir, ACT Drum Corps The Singalong Choir, Denise Leigh’s operatic singing at Alsager Civic, Festive market stalls, fairground rides, life-size Minion characters etc. An array of local shops will also be open during this event. The Christmas lights will be switched on at 6pm at the Bank Corner crossroads, followed by a spectacular firework display. Wrap up warm!

Cheshire East Council is to give free wi-fi access to library members.

The service will be available across all of its 16 libraries for all library opening hours. Members can simply log in using their existing membership number and password/PIN. Anyone who isn’t a member can easily join free of charge. In addition to wi-fi they can then take advantage of a wealth of free resources. To join you just need to bring in one proof of identity showing name and address. The service is part of the Council’s aim to help people get online more easily through a modern library service and promotes digital inclusion across Cheshire East. The service will adopt the security filtering as on its public network in order to safeguard young people.

Over the last 4 years, CVS Cheshire East has been working with Storage Boost in Crewe and staff from AstraZeneca’s Alderley Park site to provide Christmas presents for families in real need across Cheshire East.

The toys and gifts that are donated are given to local charities and organisations who work with families and children who may be facing an extra hard time at Christmas. Without these donations, some of the children involved wouldn’t receive any other gifts at Christmas, something that we wouldn’t want any family to have to go through. How can you help? · [Read more…]

Alsager Station has again been named as one of the winners in the East Midlands Trains 2015 Best Stations Awards. The ‘Community Partnership Award’ went to Alsager for its award winning station gardens including bespoke floral displays to mark special events and the involvement of local schools which has made a huge impact on reducing anti-social behaviour. The latest accomplishment adds to the long list of awards won due to improvements made at the station. The awards, which are now in their sixth year, celebrate the best of the train operator’s 89 stations under different categories. They are made by a panel of judges comprising independent passenger watchdog, Transport Focus, as well as East Midlands Trains’ directors and senior managers. [Read more…]

Over the last 4 years, CVS Cheshire East has been working with Storage Boost in Crewe and staff from AstraZeneca’s Alderley Park site to provide Christmas presents for families in real need across Cheshire East. The toys and gifts that are donated are given to local charities and organisations who work with families and children who may be facing an extra hard time at Christmas. Without these donations, some of the children involved wouldn’t receive any other gifts at Christmas, something that we wouldn’t want any family to have to go through. Last year, we helped 60 Cheshire East organisations provide toys to the families they were working with and it was fantastic to see some of the thank you messages and photos from the children who received the gifts. [Read more…]

Alsager’s new Community Fire Station will be officially opened on Friday 7th August 2015 at 11:00am.

The fire station has been built as part of a comprehensive plan to improve response times across Cheshire. Guidelines say firefighters are expected to reach house fires and road accidents within 10 minutes of a 999 call but that was difficult in Alsager because crews were sent from Sandbach or Crewe. Following a major public consultation, a wide-ranging Emergency Response Programme was agreed in principle which involved building some new fire stations which included Alsager. The site in Brookhouse Road was identified to build the new Community Fire Station to speed up reponse times in the locality and a public consultation showed that the vast majority of respondents (95%) supported the plans. Alsager Fire Station will be an on call fire station which means it is staffed by on-call firefighters who will have other main jobs as well. Following recruitment last October 11 crew have been taken on who have been in training on drill nights at Congleton Fire Station and are now ready to start in Alsager.