Written evidence submitted by the Friends of West End Park [PKS 066]
Background:
Where is West End Park?
West End Park is on higher ground to the East of Cleckheaton, a small market town by Junction 26 of the M62 motorway to the South of Bradford in West Yorkshire.
Who are the ‘Friends of West End Park?
At the suggestion of Kirklees Council, a group of local residents formed themselves 4 years ago into a community group with a constitution aimed at opening respectful use and enjoyment of the green space to as wide a range and large a number of visitors as possible. We meet monthly to further these aims. Since we breached the annual limit for income we registered in 2016 as charity No. 1167371
What kind of park is West End?
The park is a roughly square area of grass, slightly larger than a football pitch, bordered to the North by Whitcliffe Mount School, to the West by grazing land, to the South by the Park Green View Housing Development and the east by the road known as Park View. A public footpath bisects the park diagonally from top right to bottom left. The pathway along the southern boundary forms part of the Kirklees Way.
History of the park
West End Park was bequeathed in 1885 for the ‘Recreation of the working people of Cleckheaton’. It was originally a traditional Victorian park with paths and benches and floral planting. There were toilets, a bandstand and other small buildings. By 2012 one bench and a small playground was all that was left. Local authority maintenance involved mowing and a twice-yearly weed-killing spray along the paths and lining a football pitch. There was a general air of neglect, litter and dog mess.
The park is now a thriving, well-used resource with an interesting mixture of features to attract a wider user-base. We have achieved much but have more to do.
Who uses the park, how often and for what?
The Friends of West End Park conducted surveys in 2012 and 2016 of users at various times of day to establish who uses the park and for what. This was not a rigorous or scientific study but serves to indicate trends.
Overall, weekdays in term-time sees the transit of many children through the park to Whitcliffe Mount and Heaton Avenue schools. Others travel through on their way to work. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon sees groups of pre-school and nursery children with their carers, mainly in the playground. Pupils from Heaton Ave. School, which has no other green space, occasionally practice sports in the centre of the field during the day and hold their annual Sports day there. On an evening young people gather in the park to drink, smoke and hold impromptu parties. At a weekend the playground becomes a centre of attraction for young families.
The full-sized football pitch was used on a Sunday by local teams, with goal-posts erected during the season by the council. This has been discontinued as of 2012 as the poorly-drained area and over-use meant that the playing surface became damaged. Some teams still practice on weekday evenings and the West End Park Junior teams practice and play on Saturday and Sunday mornings using the drier top half of the park.
Dog-walkers use the Park at all times of day and night and form a significant portion of user-numbers.
Since the Friends started their work there has been a doubling of numbers of families, children and carers using the park. Especially during the week-day, older users are now a significant section of the population as well. The local Cheshire Home now brings residents on fine days to enjoy the flowers and rest on the benches.
The contribution of parks to the health and well-being of communities
There is a benefit to any community of having a green space for recreation and relaxation but this is greatly increased if that area is planned, developed and managed with that purpose in mind.
Involving the community in that effort adds to that effect, but it must be acknowledged that this will inevitably fall on a small number of volunteers with the desire and imagination to make it happen. Use of social media will encourage user numbers and a sense of civic pride but the days of large volunteer numbers has largely gone.
Our park is designed to encourage users to look beyond the boundary of the enclosed space to the landscape beyond. We aimed to make the space cleaner, safer more accessible and inspirational and in that we have succeeded.
The impact of reductions in local authority budgets on parks
The impact of budget cuts on parks has to be seen in context of cuts and their implementation across all areas of local authority service provision, both in terms of the effect on local opinion and also the interpretation of the ‘statutory/non-statutory’ dichotomy. Parks and green spaces in particular are under pressure from the demand for building land. Much more green space in our area than other parts of Kirklees have been allocated for building so we feel the threat to our parks and green spaces more keenly.
In our Kirklees Council the cabinet is entirely comprised of Labour Councillors. Our local area of Cleckheaton has three councillors who are all Liberal democrats. They are isolated and excluded from all decisions which increases the sense of disenfranchisment. Our local sports centre has been demolished and not replaced, whilst a new centre has been built in Huddersfield. Our local library, housed in a much-loved, historic purpose-built building gifted by a local family in memory of their son is now threatened with closure, as the service, in some form, is held to be statutory but not the building.
At the start of the recession, councillors lacked the political will to make the necessarily large savings, thinking only short term and hoping that it would go away. Budget cuts were implemented more slowly in local authorities than in the private sector, which is partly due also to the annualised structure of budgetary control and the impact of the election cycles
The abrogation of responsibility by elected members has led to a moving of decision-making to council officers who themselves feel under threat and have no responsibility other than to try and maintain their position by following the management lead. This is not an empowered culture, rather the opposite. Our Local authority nursery was closed and the supply of plants put out to tender. The successful bidder was a council in the North east who did not have a nursery themselves but were sub-contracting the supply! The contacts to do this were signed before the matter came before the full council for review.
None of the improvements that have been made in our park would have been made by the local authority alone. Their attitude was one of minimal-cost maintenance. Their actions, especially in the farcical implementation of a policy of not mowing in certain areas in certain parks, had a negative effect on our planted areas, sent our dog-mess state backwards and showed that they had no care or concern for our work. This is largely due to a lack of communication within the various elements of the council structure who administer parks and the diminished morale amongst the teams that make it happen (or not).
The council officer who designed the ‘no-mow’ policy had never visited our park and didn’t know or it seemed, care about the impact of the circles he drew on a plan. This greatly added to the local feeling of neglect in Cleckheaton, which is on the boundary of two council areas and distant from the erstwhile capital (Huddersfield)
Any work that we do in the park is seen as adding to the council burden. We noticed, for example, that an extra bin was needed at the far corner of the park, so we raised money to pay for it and then paid the council to install it. It took nearly a year for it to be added to the list for emptying and if our usual street-cleaner (Whose role will disappear later this year) is on holiday, it is ‘forgotten’.
We have a ‘poo bag dispenser but this is no longer filled-up by the council as we were ‘using too many’ (which we felt rather demonstrated the need’
What the administrative status of parks should be in light of declining local authority resources for non-statutory services
Parks and green spaces can only be saved by making their provision statutory. This should follow a third-party survey and review to establish what we have, what is its state and how can it best be managed/improved/disposed-of. The provision of green space in new developments should be handled in a similar way to the statutory provision of ‘affordable housing’ as a planning provision.
How new and existing parks can best be supported
Setting-up community groups and talking with existing ones to establish a plan for each site that sets-out what the council will be responsible-for. Voluntary help in addition to that should be seen as a bonus rather than an essential.
What additional or alternative funding is available and what scope is there for local authorities to generate revenue from park users
Parks are so much a part of our national identity that we don’t accept them to be a non-statutory obligation on the part of the council. Communities see them as accessible to all and not just those who can afford to pay an entry fee. Outside events are not usually economically viable if only for their very susceptibility to the weather.
There is, as we have demonstrated, funding available from environmental groups and local industry but that is for specific projects and not maintenance.
What the advantages and disadvantages are of other management models, such as privatisation, outsourcing or mutualisation
Voluntary groups are increasingly less willing to expose themselves to the risks involved in taking over control of council resources as the conditions can be onerous and time-consuming.
It would be possible to sell-off some areas of larger parks for housing and put funding into maintenance trusts for the remaining sections, thus preserving their futures. This would be like the existing ‘section 106’ conditions. Such housing should be as upmarket as possible to maximise the benefits of a green site, maximise developer income and thus the input into the trust.
Privatisation of services such as mowing has obvious benefits so long as there is are suitable quality controls in place.
Larger local companies often have staff ‘paid volunteering days’ that can be used and longer-term relationships encouraged..
Appendix
What have the Friends of West End Park achieved over the last 4 years?
We raised over £40,000 from grants and sponsorships which, together with the labour of a small team of around 6 people, enabled us to:
Plant over 500 trees, including a ‘wave of willows to help dry-out a wet spot, lay a path of 125metres that completed a circle within the park space, install an outside classroom, instigate tree-works that ensure a long-term future for the whole tree-stock, laid a flower bed along one entire boundary, repaired dry-stone walls, repaired and improved the children’s obstacle course, plant a ‘Bee Happy’ wildflower meadow (To replace an unmown area) open up and grass-over two overgrown and dark corners, install bat, bug, squirrel, hedgehog and bird houses, plant veg-boxes and fruit bushes/trees for public consumption, Install 4 formal memorial and two rustic benches, install 3 rubbish bins and a notice board.
We won a silver gilt award in ‘Yorkshire in Bloom’ before the unmown areas made that impossible
Our volunteers rubbish-pick every day.
We planted a tree and surrounding seat to remember our local MP, Jo Cox, and several others have trees with plaques. We have a ‘Last Post’ with dog-tags to commemorate passed pets