Project given national prize

Planners at Newark and Sherwood District Council have been presented with an award for their work on the Sherwood Energy Village, Ollerton.

The council was given the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Silver Jubilee Cup for its redevelopment of the former colliery site.

It beat 86 other entries to the title for town regeneration, and then won the overall award for all 12 categories, for which it received the cup.

The energy village was established after the closure of the town’s largest employers, the colliery and two textile factories, which had all shut by the mid-1990s.

Led by Mr Stan Crawford, an Ollerton and Boughton town councillor and former trade union convenor at the colliery, an industrial provident society was formed.

The group adopted a mixed-use development of industrial units, retail and housing, all built using green development practices.

Speaking at a planning committee meeting, the leader of the district council, Mr Tony Roberts, said: “It is a great honour to have the efforts of everyone involved in the creation of Sherwood Energy Village acknowledged and rewarded in this way.

“It is a high accolade by a professional organisation and very much deserved by those who had the vision, commitment and determination to see this project delivered.”

Mr Crawford, the managing director of the energy village, said: “We have been described as trailblazers, but we would not be where we are if the planning officers had not been as forward thinking as they have been.”

The chairman of the village’s board of directors, Mr Ben Wells, said: “We had a pit covered with sludge and water in the winter, and dust in the summer, but it is now taking shape.

“Many other former colliery areas would have liked to have moved forward like the community of Ollerton has done, and I am very proud to be associated with it.”