THE senior council officer appointed as Hexham's 'town champion' has admitted she wasn't aware of plans to build a multi-storey car park in the town until last week.

Lorraine Dewison, one of nine officials who have been nominated to help take forward the proposals for each of the county's market towns, told Hexham Town Council on Monday night that she was unable to confirm whether the county council's head of property or head of technical services were aware of the news before the sudden announcement last Monday.

Billed as a "huge parking boost" for Northumberland's market towns, the council's Labour leader, Coun. Grant Davey, pledged to include multi-storey car parks for Hexham, Morpeth, Ashington and Cramlington in February's budget.

He added that the car parks would be funded by the financial success of the administration selling the redundant County Hall site in Morpeth for development while moving into a smaller headquarters in Ashington.

"I was made aware of this last week and more parking in Hexham is good news," Mrs Dewison told the meeting.

"Exactly where the multi-storey might be is still outstanding, but we will be talking to the town council about potential sites and their suitability."

Mayor of Hexham, Coun. Trevor Cessford, said: "The town council has worked very hard to tackle this issue for the last two years and yet we were kept totally out of the loop on this."

County councillor for Hexham East, Coun. Cath Homer, said: "My understanding is that this came as a surprise to the head of property and the head of technical services as well.

"We need to know details like where, how much and the implications this has for the people of Hexham.

"The one good thing from this is the acknowledgement that Hexham has a problem with long-stay parking."

Mrs Dewison added: "I couldn't say who else was aware.

"My job is to work with you to take back the messages you'd like heard and ensure they're fed into this process."