IT is easy to be cynical about campaigns and events to breathe new life into Hexham.

Over the years, there have been many, soaring like Bonfire Night rockets in a spectacular blaze of flair and colour, before fizzling out in a sea of apathy.

The streets used to be filled with floats snaking round the town for the Hexham Carnival, while the festivities of the town fair used to go on for a full week, with the Market Place filled with stalls and circus acts.

After a number of short lived revivals, the town fair is no more, while the carnival has been reduced to a small number of musicians playing in the bandstand.

Is there a reason why Hexham’s Carnival has withered, while 15 miles along the A69 Haltwhistle’s gets bigger and better each year?

Four years ago, there was such huge support for the Hexham River Hydro Scheme to have a turbine installed in the Tyne that the scheme won a national competition for a £100,000 prize. The generator was supposed to provide £100,000 each year to be lavished on Hexham, but the laudable scheme was soon dead in the water, killed off by soaring costs.

The new kid on the block in the long awaited regeneration of Hexham is the BID project being driven by the business community, which seems prepared to dip into its own pocket to secure an annual investment of £170,000 in the town.

Business rates in Hexham are eye-wateringly high and the business community is to be commended for being prepared to dig still deeper to get this project off the ground.

Goodness knows, the town needs a fillip of some kind to take the mind off the empty shops of Battle Hill and Fore Street and the boarded up Royal Hotel.

Let us hope the initiative succeeds and proves sustainable, so that Hexham can once again return to the status it once enjoyed as England’s favourite market town.