I take my hat off to Neil & the friends of Rhyddings Park for saying that they will continue to bid for grants to complete the planned work, which includes improvements to pathways and drainage.
Thank you for that.
We refuse to sit on our backsides and will be actively seeking other bids on our own. The main lottery bid was in fact made by the Council with us on the project team assisting in every way we could.
The Friends of Rhyddings Park are now applying for funding themselves with HBC assisting us as required with things like suppliers and planning issues. We have our first meeting with an equipment designer/supplier on Tuesday and Gayle is already working on funding application forms. Like I said we are not sat down doing nothing
Are repairs to pathways not HBC's responsibility, are the parks not allocated a "maintenance budget"
All work in the park is HBC's responsibility. The only odd bit is Pets Corner which is managed by the Friends under the supervision of the Council. It has to be that way as they are responsible for everything in the park.
How much has HBC spent on maintenance in Rhyddings Park over the last 10 years.............not a lot, or should that be nothing at all
Not enough would be more accurate than not a lot. Because of this long ongoing bid - well over 3 years this time and a previous bid failed 10 years ago (ish), money had not been spent in the park. I do agree to a point that you would not want to spend a lot of money to find a refurbishment program paid for by lottery money undid some of the work you spent money on. Unfortuneatly this has led to the park falling into a very poor state. Lots of work should have been carried out just to keep paths safe etc.
What a sad mess Rhyddings Park has become, all because of the lack of maintenance budgets not being spent where they should be.
Fair point I think - money was spent elsewhere in the belief that a massive revamp was on its way. This would not have been too bad if the bid process had not dragged on for as long as it has done - still now it is not completed as the bid has been resubmitted for a final time to this particular funding body so we are waiting again. The only difference now is that the Council have agreed to do some of the work that is needed anyway.
So the question is asked what has the park's budget been spent on, not on the parks.
I believe the parks budget is underfunded both in capital money and in man power.
The decline of Rhyddings Park has been over the last 25 years. Maintenance funds were plentiful in those days.
I am glad you said that. For many years now previous and current Councils have found themselves cutting the budgets available for our parks. This takes years to show itself as a problem as the parks slowly fell apart. Millions of pounds are needed to restore several parks in Hyndburn to the sort of standard that we all expect. The actual cost of refurbishing Rhyddings Park is well over £2 million. Years of neglect by many Councils have caused it, I hope that the Councils of the next few years can find the money to sort it out.
In years gone by parks didn't suffer the trouble they do now.
They now suffer so much vandalism so it seems to me that the reason we don't have the things you mentioned is because it costs too much money to provide these things and then to have to constantly fork out for repairs/replacements due to vandalism.
Another problem is that the vandalism is not being repaired. The Council have to work with the Police to sort out many of the issues we have in the parks.
Local residents don't help either. I am expecting a lot of resistance ( we have had some already ) about our plans to puts things into Rhyddings park for the secondary school sort of age group. They have nothing to do and no where to go in the park. They end up hanging around in the kiddies play area - many of them started playing in there when it was new and they were in primary school. There is nothing for them to move on to so they stay. They also hang around on the benches around the bowling green which causes problems as well.
Bullough Park is a disgrace too. It's not fit to call a park and the path down to Perth Street is like something from Sleeping Beauty's Castle.
In my opinion Hyndburn has too many green spaces to look after with the current size of its parks department. I was very disapointed when they created the new one off Henry Street in Church. Why create a new one when they can't afford to look after what they have? I am sure it was funded from some grant or another but when that ends HBC will have to pay to maintain it.
Maybe Accrington should loose one of its parks, it has several while Oswaldtwistle only has one park yet has half the population of Accrington. The park is also close to the towns border with Spring Hill so attracts a lot of visitors from that area of Accrington as well.
One interesting figure I have just pulled out of the bid is that the population within a 1km catchment area of the park is over 14,000.
) too many parks now .. people don't utilise them at all .. have cars and travel away for the weekend, and access on leisure hours to other venues. Was different in the old days during industrial success .. think some could be flattened and just green open spaces for walking areas.
