This is Rammy

Bury Council has published revised proposals for improving how people get around Ramsbottom town centre, and there are two public events coming up where you can find out more and ask questions.

The scheme is part of the wider Bee Network investment across Greater Manchester, funded by the UK Government through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement. The money is ringfenced for walking, cycling, and sustainable transport improvements specifically.

The big goal across Greater Manchester is for 50% of all trips to be made by public transport, walking or cycling by 2040. These town centre improvements are Ramsbottom’s piece of that puzzle.

What’s actually being proposed?

The revised plans focus on making it easier and safer to get around the town centre on foot, by bike, or by public transport. Key proposals include:

• A new controlled pedestrian crossing on Bolton Street, north of Kay Brow
• A shared-use path for pedestrians and cyclists on Bridge Street, between Crow Lane and Palatine Street
• A 20mph speed limit across the town centre
• A number of other new and improved pedestrian crossings

What changed after the last consultation?

There was a public consultation back in 2022 and another in 2024, which received 1,504 responses. People clearly had a lot to say, and to their credit, the council listened.

The most significant change is that the proposed one-way system has been scrapped entirely. Residents and local businesses raised serious concerns about congestion, emergency vehicle access, HGVs on Kay Brow, and the potential impact on footfall and deliveries. Those concerns were heard, and the one-way system is gone.

With it goes the associated pavement widening on Bridge Street and at the northern end of Bolton Street, which was only needed to accommodate the one-way traffic flow anyway.

The 20mph zone, which had strong support during consultation, has been kept in.

Come along and find out more

There are two public presentation events being held at Ramsbottom Civic Hall, Market Place, BL0 9AJ:

• Wednesday 27 May – 6.30pm to 7.30pm
• Tuesday 2 June – 5pm to 6pm

Each session includes a 30-minute presentation followed by a 30-minute Q&A. If you’ve got questions or opinions about how all this affects your part of town, it’s well worth turning up.

After these events, Bury Council councillors will consider the revised scheme for approval. If it gets the green light, construction is expected to start in 2027 and take around 12 months.

If you can’t make the events but want to get in touch, you can email the project team at [email protected].

Full details of the revised proposals are on the Bury Council website.

Are you planning to go along to one of the events? And what do you make of the revised plans? Let us know in the comments.

A Ramsbottom mum says she’s “living in terror” after an excavation pit dug by developers across the road from her house was abandoned — and has been slowly crumbling ever since.

Bethanie Bailey, 35, lives on Carr Street with her five-month-old baby. She says the pit — which sits between Carr Street and Tanners Street — has been getting wider every day, and she’s genuinely scared about the risk of a landslip.

“What goes through my head is ‘I don’t want to be buried in my house’,” she told BBC Radio Manchester. “I don’t want to be lying in bed for a tree to fall across the roof. It’s really scary.”

The work was part of an approved plan to build a single dwelling with a garage on the site. Trucks arrived last year to excavate the steep bank, but a Health and Safety Executive inspector ordered work to stop in October until the slopes could be proven stable enough for workers. The developer, Blakeman Design and Build, went into liquidation in 2024.

Since then, the site has just sat there. Bethanie says she had no idea what was going on for a long time — and that’s part of what makes it so unsettling.

She’s now started a petition alongside other local residents calling on the council to stabilise the bank and recover costs from the developer. It’s passed 785 signatures.

“At the end of the day, all that I want is it to be made safe. I don’t care what it looks like.”

Bury Council’s building control officers have visited the site and say the excavation doesn’t pose an immediate risk to the public, with “no evidence” that nearby buildings face any immediate risk of damage. The council says the situation is “complex”, involves multiple parties, and it’s doing “all it can” to help reach a resolution.

There’s also apparently a legal dispute running in the background over a combined drain that was severed during the works, causing water to spill out onto the site. United Utilities has tested the water and confirmed it’s “clean, untreated water” that isn’t coming from their network, and says it will continue supporting investigations by other agencies.

Bury Council says it’s “continuing to investigate and monitor the situation” and that the civil issues between several parties “require mutual resolution”.

It’s a grim situation — a liquidated developer, a stalled legal dispute, and a young mum left watching a hole in the ground get bigger from her window. Nobody’s saying the risk is immediate, but “no immediate risk” is a long way from “sorted”.

Full story via BBC News, reported by Ewan Gawne.

If you’re local and have more context on this — or you’ve signed the petition — feel free to share what you know in the comments.

Volunteers at the East Lancashire Railway spent hours cleaning spray paint off a locomotive and several coaches after a graffiti attack sometime over the bank holiday weekend.

The railway described it as an attack on their “irreplaceable” InterCity 125 set — stock they call “irreplaceable” — and said quick action by volunteers helped “prevent what could have been significant and lasting damage”.

To make it worse, one of the coaches had only been repainted in February. So someone’s hard work, redone in a matter of hours by whoever decided this was a good idea.

Mike Kelly, the railway’s chairman, didn’t mince words: “This is a disgraceful and deeply frustrating attack on a railway run largely by volunteers. It is nothing short of a kick in the teeth for those who work so hard to maintain and preserve historic traction and rolling stock.”

That’s the thing worth remembering here — the ELR runs on volunteer time. The people cleaning up that spray paint on a bank holiday weekend weren’t getting paid. They were there because they care about the place.

The railway says it’s working with Greater Manchester Police, who have increased patrols in the area.

The ELR runs 12.5 miles between Heywood and Rawtenstall, passing through the Irwell Valley — so yes, this is very much on our doorstep.

Full story over at BBC News.

If you saw anything suspicious around the railway over the bank holiday weekend, it’s worth getting in touch with Greater Manchester Police.