09/04/2017 Look North (North East and Cumbria)

Good evening. Kennedy, BBC News at Vimy Ridge.

Coffins could be washed out of a West Cumbrian graveyard

during future flooding, unless urgent action is taken

That's the warning from locals, whose loved ones are buried

in the cemetery which has already flooded twice in recent years.

St Peter's Church in Camerton lost a 20-yard strip of cemetery

Rock defences costing ?100,000 were installed,

but six years later, Storm Desmond not only

damaged the defences, it altered the entire course

of the river, making the graveyard even more vulnerable than before.

Since 2015, this bank was washed out over here.

The water is now heading down towards the church instead

of meandering around and if nothing is done, it is going to cut

through the graveyard like a hot knife going through butter.

The cost of repairs is estimated at ?50,000 but the insurance

The churchwarden says if the repairs aren't carried out, there may be

In the 2009 floods, we had eight or nine graves washed out and we had

unsavoury sights of bones and skulls and coffins floating down the river.

The diocese is sympathetic but doesn't have deep pockets.

Obviously people's homes and businesses and the infrastructure

of the county need to take precedence and in any case,

protecting this very low-lying land will never be completely successful.

Each church is a legally separate body, so the diocese is providing

The damaged defences are due to be reassesed soon,

but unless the money can be found, St Peter's graveyard looks

Damian O'Neil, BBC Look North in Camerton in West Cumbria.

A man's died after his motorbike collided with

It happened on the A189 near Blyth this lunchtime.

His female pillion passenger is in a critical condition.

Meanwhile, another man's died after a head on crash

It happened at Newton on the Moor last night, when a van,

which was heading south in the northbound lane,

And a man's been charged with causing death by careless

driving whilst over the alcohol limit, after a 91-year-old woman

was hit by a car in Gosforth in Newcastle on Thursday night.

A man's been arrested after a stand-off with police in Redcar

Officers were called to Arthur Street last night,

where a man had barricaded himself inside a property.

It resulted in homes being evacuated because of a potential gas leak.

But then door-to-door enquiries revealed potential hazardous

substances in a neighbouring home, so bomb disposal experts

It later emerged the items were not illegal or dangerous.

People living in the Southbank area of York say their pavements

have become an eyesore, after Virgin Media dug them up

Now the company is having to employ a new contractor to put

This award-winning suburb of York is better known for having the best

It has hosted street parties and welcomed the Tour de France.

And now, residents in the Bishopthorpe Road area

Virgin Media has agreed to improve the pavements

after a catalogue of complaints about its contract work.

For instance, they had dug up a private road without permission,

then I had information about an internet connection

ironically being cut off and then a gas supply being cut off.

After laying hundreds of metres of new internet cables,

the contractors working for Virgin Media left uneven,

broken paving stones, failing concrete and messy brickwork.

They have a statutory duty to make sure that all the work is done

properly and they should return and sort out the mess

Rachael Maskell recently invited Virgin Media to inspect

the work and as a result, the company agreed to hire

a new contractor, saying it was aware of some concerns made

by residents and had already begun to take steps forward

So York residents can now rest assured that while improvements

are being made to their internet highways, their pavements

Football and Sunderland stay rooted to the bottom of the Premier League

after a 3-0 home defeat to Manchester United this afternoon.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic opened the visitor's account on the half

The Black Cats went down to ten men shortly after when Sebastian Larsson

Straight after half time Henrikh Mkhitaryan made it 2-0.

And five minutes from time, Marcus Rashford finished things off

Here's Abbie Dewhurst with the forecast.

After a gorgeous weekend for most, we are going to start

This weather front sinking down towards the south-east is a cold

front, meaning it will turn colder as we head through the next week.

You can see it bringing in a little bit of drizzle and one or two

showers but we have some clear spells as we head through the early

hours, meaning that temperatures will take a bit of a dip.

We will start tomorrow on a pretty chilly note.

It will be a much cooler day, temperatures returning

Patchy cloud and some decent spells of sunshine.

The outlook for the rest of the week is turning a little more unsettled.

I'll be back with the late news at 10.20.

Good evening. If you can use a smelter describes the weather it

would be owed a barbecue, and why not? Beautiful