Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Campaigners fear that Haringey parks ‘face losing Green Flag awards after months of neglect’
The Journal reports today on the fear by parks campaigners in Haringey that the much vaunted Green Flag status of 16 of the borough's green spaces will be lost due to staff cuts and neglect.
Rod Wells, joint secretary of the Friends of Downhills Park, is reported as saying: “The Friends were surprised that the Green Flag was awarded. They are very angry to have the parks management confirm that the only maintenance to be carried out is the cursory ‘winter clear up.
“They do not want Haringey parks to go back to the neglected state they were in in the eighties. They want the gardeners back and proper maintenance restored.”
He added that the 170-year-old Italian garden in the park is now in a “deplorable state”, with three foot high thistles and thick overgrowing weeds choking the flowers. Litter has also been strewn across the park since maintenance cutbacks in May.
The council’s parks and open spaces maintenance budget for 2011-12 has been cut by 50 per cent.
The Journal also spoke to a council spokesperson who said, “As a result of the budget cuts, we’re currently reorganising the grounds maintenance team so that - to the best of our ability - the borough’s parks and open spaces remain clean, safe and fun places to be.
“We’re working with the Haringey Friends of Parks Forum and other park users on how we can all mitigate the impact of the cuts.”
What do people think? I've been pleased to see that both Ducketts and Fairland were spick and span when I've visited them over the last couple of weeks of the summer, after a shaky start. Downhills seems to suffer worse than most parks with litter, and Bruce Castle was a bit tatty looking last time I was there. The neglect of flower beds is noticeable in many of the parks although in this Bruce Castle is doing much better than others (see below). This piecemeal maintenance could be due to the extra staff we know they recruited over the summer. I do share the concern of the parks forum that 'cursory winter clean ups' will cause parks to slip back into the bad old days of the past as staff struggle to keep up with the schedule. As Forum chairwoman Joan Curtis points out in the article the borough’s parks are in “grave danger of becoming ‘problem’ spaces with negative implications and actually a long term drain on resources”. We saw how after just a couple of weeks back at the beginning of the summer, how quickly the parks can become uninviting and litter strewn.
Something else that has been bugging me about this is park safety. When the parks police were cut and replaced with Parkforce, part of the deal was that, due to increased numbers of parks staff, we wouldn't need so much policing because there would always be plenty of park rangers about. However, with a 50% cut, we have effectively lost those staff hours and the parks police and therefore the much trumpeted Parkforce scheme now lacks one key plank of its structure, namely "Increased frontline parks staff (more than 17,000 additional hours per year)". Moreover, did we get outreach officers for all the zones (there does appear to be a part time one for Markfield Park as I get their email) and how can I sign up to find out what they offer? Isn't this scheme now greatly undermined by the cuts to parks? Could it even be said to be defunct? Is park safety compromised because of it?
Tags for Forum Posts: parks, public spending cuts
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Councillor Canver convened a meeting of Friends groups back in July ( I think it was). The meeting confirmed cuts to parks services;
1. repairs budget (including play equipment), down from £425,000 pa to £100,000
2. staffing (parks & Homes for Harringay contract) split into 6 zones across the borough with 6 staff per zone = 36 staff in total, reduced from 59.
3. BTCV contract cut by 60%
4. Groundwork has about 1.5 years left of their contract with the council
Council seemed to be asking Friends groups what would they be willing to do as volunteers. Meeting then split off into groups to discuss ideas for voluntary contributions. Most people thought a little litter picking might be OK and a few other ideas thrown around, Community Payback being one.
Apparently there is a plan for another meeting, probably in Oct/Nov.
Note: officer in charge of reduced parks maintenance budet is a Simon Farrow (Head of Client Services)
Yes I've also been happy with maintenance level of Fairland Park lately after poor record in July.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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So,it would seem that Parkforce is, to all intents and purposes, dead then. Lasted 2 and 1/2 years then and at the end of it we are further back (i.e. no parks police) than before it began. That was well worth all the fanfare then.
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Permalink Reply by JulieB on
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Our nearest is Chestnuts park and I a few weeks ago it was looking much more neglected than usual - mainly just because of litter. But I was there at the weekend and it was fine. I was talking to friends and they told me that the staff covering Chestnuts and a few other parks had been cut from 6 people to 1 person so it's not a surprise that it's not up to it's usual lovely standard.
I 'd never been to Bruce Grove but I went on a nursery trip in July and what struck me was the amount of beer cans littering the playground, a shame really because the playground was good but I won't be going back there.
I know cuts have to be made somewhere but our local parks were looking so lovely and are a really important part of our urban lives so it's such a shame seeing them go into decline.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Any further news, Liz, about the Community Volunteers group? (With the riot and other pressing issues I'd left this to one side.)
I'm not hinting that unpaid volunteers can or ever should replace the Parkforce cuts. But plainly, the work of the Community Volunteers has been consistently valuable; with potential for collaboration with Council services.
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No Alan, there hasn't been any word on the CV programme. The BTCV have been doing valuable work with volunteers in parks like Markfield. We really don't need the CVs to move into parks because there are already groups organising around parks, such as the Friends groups. However, volunteers are not a sustainable way to ensure park safety.
The Parkforce scheme was clearly not a sustainable route either. Personally, I think a programme that lasted only 2 and 1/2 years, did not find anyway to become resilient against cuts and whose loss compromises park safety should be judged a failure. Would it not have made more sense to introduce some volunteer capacity into the programme at the beginning of the scheme rather than be scrambling around now, trying to find people to pick up the litter and weed the flower beds as paid staff are laid off?
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Permalink Reply by Inkjetpack on
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RE: Downhills
I’ve previously found that one of the biggest litter problems is focused around the Phillip Lane/Parkview School entrance, not sure if this has got better or worse since the new entrance from the school directly into the park. Things seemed ok when I was over there during the holidays.
I thought school children were now actively discouraged from eating takeaways at lunchtimes? The school/chicken place nearby (most of it is from there) should be held jointly responsible for any litter caused by their pupils.
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I've just been looking at the results of Ireland's 'Tidy Towns Competition'. A record entry of 821 this year in eight categories of towns and villages, with Killarney town recording its first win by pipping Emly, tidiest village, by 310 points to 309. Vision, hard work, community effort year round seem to be the ingredients for scoring highly, though even "litter-free" Killarney still seems to have the old cigarette butt problem.
Time perhaps for a Tidy Haringey Competition in eight categories: 19 Wards, Large Parks, Small Parks, Shopping Areas, Districts/Neighbourhoods, "Villages", Roads, Streets.
(Bribes to our French Cleaning Lady, Veolia, allowed of course, if not detected.)
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I cant tell you how much we all miss Mike the head gardener and his team at Bruce Castle park. I saw him nearly every morning for more than 20 years, as a single woman at the park very early each day before work, his presence was always much appreciated, the park feels eerily isolated in the mornings and l feel that my safety and security has been severely compromised by these savage cuts.
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