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A team including people linked to North East financial advisers Carterbar took part in the Coast to Coast cycle ride to support efforts to help young people in Middlesbrough.The sponsored team comprised Arthur Dornan, Managing Director of the Billingham company, Gary Cox, husband of Operations Director Suzanne Cox, and Dave Wherritt, husband of Senior Administrator Gill Wherritt.

They were part of a team of 14 people tackling the 150-mile route to raise money for the youth groups at Sue and Gill’s church, the Ecclesiastical Parish of St Mary the Virgin Nunthorpe, in Middlesbrough.
The women help run the groups, which provide activities for more than 100 young people in the Nunthorpe area. The work also reaches out into local schools. The ride raised more than £4,000 for the groups.

The cycle route was opened in 1994 and runs from Whitehaven on the west coast of Cumbria to the North East coast and has an average of between 12,000 and 15,000 cyclists completing it every year. The team finished at Hartlepool.

Arthur Dornan said: “I have not cycled regularly since my youth but was persuaded to take to the saddle again for this good cause. The reason we  took on the challenge is to support the excellent work done by these community groups. I was inspired when I heard the work that they do and everyone taking part was keen to support them.”

If you would like to support the team, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/nunthorpepcc

It’s the Church that refused to die and now parishioners at The Church of St James the Great in Darlington are planning confidently for the future after experiencing the loss of their vicar and 55 congregation members. The Church, which is in Albert Hill, was torn apart when a significant number of its congregation left to join the Ordinariate earlier this year. The Ordinariate is a structure within the Roman Catholic Church which allows former Anglicans to join but retain elements of their Anglican tradition.
The Church of St James the Great has an Anglo-Catholic tradition (that is to say a Church which has a tradition of dramatic and formal worship ) since it was built in the 1870s. In early 2011 it became clear that a significant number of parishioners wanted to join the Roman Catholic Ordinariate  Not everyone among the congregation agreed, however, with many parishioners keen for the Church to continue in the way it had since its creation more than 130 years ago.
The result was an inevitable split and the vicar and 55 congregation members, including all but one of the Parish Church Council, left. On February 19 this year, Father Grieves and those who were about to leave offered their final Mass at St James the Great before joining The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, to worship at St Anne’s RC Church, Darlington. Although the split was deeply felt they invited the Bishop of Durham to preach at their final Sunday and left sadly but amicably.
Now, however, those who remained are looking optimistically to the future. The departure of the 55 has left St James the Great with 73 registered in the congregation, including some whom have returned to worship since the split. Numbers at services can reach one hundred.
David Warren, who became Parish Church Council Chair, said: “We knew for a year that they were going to leave and it was a difficult time. We were a congregation divided, some committed to St James the Great, some committed to leaving for the Ordinariate. What happened was difficult at an individual level because some friendships were fractured. Some relationships suffered.
“When the others left, there were times when the viability of the church was questioned but we lost fewer people than we expected and a hard core remained to continue worshipping at St James the Great. We have also seen some people return after having kept away. I sat at the back of a service not long after the split happened and thought ‘this looks pretty much as it looked before’.”
Because of its nature as an Anglo-Catholic Church, which takes in elements of both churches, St James the Great has a congregation comprising one third local people and two thirds who travel from further afield because they are attracted by the tradition of Anglo-Catholicism.
David said the Church’s commitment to the idea remains strong, adding: “When something like this happens you are obliged under the rules to reconsider whether or not you would like to stay as an Anglo-Catholic Church and we have reaffirmed that. We have always been an Anglo-Catholic Church and we wish to remain so.
“We have changed some things. Previously, we had a daily Mass. Now, we have three a week, which are reasonably well attended. The previous ones were not always well attended.
“We see what happened to us as an opportunity and our message is that we are still here. We are open for business.”
Fellow Parish Church Council member Phillip Patterson said: “There is a feeling of optimism now. What happened has been liberating. I think some people are either coming back having previously kept away or are coming for the first time. I am certainly seeing some new faces.”
Along with the new Parish Church Council, leadership of the Church rests with The Venerable Granville Gibson, a highly experienced and respected clergyman who was brought in after the departure of the congregation members.
He said: “There is a real positive feeling about what is happening at the Church. There is an energy and an enthusiasm and I am thrilled to be part of it.”

Stockton Riverside celebrated the arrival of the Olympic Torch with the passing of a Prayer Baton to The Right Revd Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham. The Bishop then said prayers specially composed for the occasion, sending blessing and prayers from the Church of England Diocese of Durham across the waters to the people of the neighbouring Diocese of York.  

The Prayer Baton was passed by Bishop Justin to the Revd Nick Barr-Hamilton of St Barnabus Lynthorpe. Bishop Justin received it from the Revd Jon Burns of Stockton after it travelled throughout the Diocese following the Olympic Torch. The Baton was passed to Durham Diocese by The Right Revd Martin Wharton, Bishop of Newcastle at an event at St Nicholas Cathedral marking the end of the Olympic Torch visit to Newcastle Diocese.

Organised by More Than Gold, the churches' response to the London 2012 Olympics, the Prayer Baton is part of a 70-day cascade of creative prayer the length and breadth of our land.
The Prayer Relay is tracking the same dates and route as the official Torch Relay as a way for individuals and churches to pray for their communities, the Games and the nations.

The Prayer Baton contains prayers and blessings from the previous city that the Olympic Torch has visited en route. These are read and new prayers and blessings are placed inside the baton ready to be passed on to the next city.

Bishop Justin said: “We are delighted that the Church in Durham Diocese has been able to play our part in the welcoming of the Olympic Torch and Prayer Baton. The spirit of community engagement that is demonstrated by both the Torch and the Prayer Baton Relays is simply fantastic and shows that as a society we can come together for the common good and celebrate as one. For the Church of England and particularly for Churches in the North East, this has been a great opportunity for us to engage with the wider community in a shared celebration of our national life within the context of Christian Prayer.”

Among the prayers being said were those commissioned by the Church of England for the Olympic Torch relay.

Office Manager Sarah Taylor woke up one morning and decided to get fit - now she’s preparing for one of the most daunting challenges of her life, running her first marathon.

Sarah works for TechConsult UK Ltd, which is based at The Wilton Centre near Redcar, Teesside, and provides skilled men and women for companies operating within the offshore, fabrication and maintenance, process, shipbuilding, and civil engineering industries.

The Rt Rev Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, today (Wednesday May 16) delivered his House of Lords Maiden Speech in which he praised the North East’s sense of innovation but appealed for more to be done to boost business confidence and for the region to be given more support in areas such as construction and skills. His comments include references to ‘the Gracious Speech,’ which is the speech delivered to Parliament by the Queen on behalf of the Government, and the ‘Budget Red Book‘, which contains Government budgetary proposals.
He said: “The North East was a centre of regeneration and human flourishing in the Dark Ages, a light across northern Europe of learning and the re-founding of knowledge. It has been, over the centuries, one of the centres of the economic life of this country and if it has one significant problem today it is that people begin too many sentences with, “the trouble with the North East”, when, in fact, it is not a problem to be solved but one of the great assets of the country.

“It is an area of innovation and exporting, the only region with a balance of trade surplus. In recent months we have seen the growth of the car plant at Nissan, which with the latest investment announced a few weeks back will employ 6,000 people. Last year Hitachi announced a train assembly plant within a few miles of where Stephenson built the Rocket. A few weeks back steel production began again on Teesside at the SSI plant, where it had stopped last year, finding jobs again for up to 1,500 people. But all this takes place against the grim economic background which the Gracious Speech recognises and which was the context of the Budget Red Book.”

He said that action was needed to encourage companies which had funds to invest, adding: “It is being hoarded not because it is needed imminently to repay debt but out of lack of confidence. Both the Gracious Speech and the Budget Red Book emphasise the importance of exports and investment, but the major constraints in the North East are not imagination or determination to achieve those ends, but confidence and skills. Already with even the very marginal recovery in export led manufacturing of the last two years, skill shortages are emerging in engineering. Skills are taught not in classrooms alone but by the motivation of job observation and work experience combined with technical teaching and vocational learning. “I have the privilege of being patron of the Northern Echo’s ‘Jobs Campaign ‘, which aims to create and find a thousand apprenticeships and internships over the next 12 months in the Darlington Region for exactly this reason. Confidence is not something that comes from words alone, but from signs of action that enable others to feel that if they don’t get moving they will get behind.”

Calling for more investment in construction, in areas such as renovations of listed buildings, he said: “Here, and in areas of the public service, there are what President Obama calls ‘shovel ready projects’, which could be brought rapidly into reality if a certain amount of money were allocated to projects where contracts could be started within six months. Cranes build confidence as well as buildings.

He said: “ This morning I was talking to the Chief Executive of the Northeast Chamber of Commerce and was delighted to learn of a regional company in the Subsea sector manufacturing remotely operated vehicles who created 500 jobs over the last 5 years.”

In the preparation notes for today’s maiden speech [attached] Bishop Justin further commented: “Some weeks ago I attended a ceremony in Newton Aycliffe where the owner of EBAC, a major manufacturer of water coolers and other office equipment, gave his company to a Trust, which will be to the benefit of the community and its staff to ensure its continued existence. That company is worth approximately £30 Million, exhibiting the kind of flourishing of community that comes from confidence.” Summing up his maiden speech he concluded: “Such flourishing is the most effective answer to the differentials in life expectancy, to the issues of family life, to the numbers of people dependant on food banks, to the issues of mental health and of human well-being that are faced across our region. The Gracious Speech focuses much on the need for renewed growth and vitality in our economy. They will not come through exhortation alone but must come through action and leadership.”

North East England recruitment company TechConsult UK has decided to target the growing energy market as part of its strategy for the coming year.

TechConsult UK Ltd, based at The Wilton Centre near Redcar, Teesside, operates within the offshore, fabrication and maintenance, process, shipbuilding, and civil engineering industries, and has a large number of workers on its books, including engineers, technicians, project managers and administration personnel.

Students at a Darlington Academy are being encouraged to learn about sport from the referee’s viewpoint. 

As part of the Junior Athlete Education Programme at St Aidan‘s Church of England Academy, gifted and talented PE students have been taking part in a programme of sessions in coaching, umpiring and refereeing in sports including football and basketball. 

North East England recruitment company TechConsult UK has appointed a key member of staff to develop its links with firms from the region. 

Techconsult UK Ltd, based at The Wilton Centre near Redcar, Teesside, operates within the offshore, fabrication and maintenance, process, shipbuilding, and civil engineering industries, and has a large number of candidates on its books, including engineers, technicians, project managers and project administration personnel. 

Students at St Aidan’s Church of England Academy in Darlington staged a fundraising week to raise money for African villagers in danger from contaminated water. 

 The students, from Cuthbert House at the Hundens Lane Academy, are raising money to purchase an Aquafilter, a pump that turns dirty water into drinking water without the use of electricity or chemicals.