‘Alarming removal of the budget for parks’

Council budgets are not easy to deliver. Especially as, in this case, Bristol City Council’s grants are being further squeezed by central government, and there is a genuine but overstated handicap inherited from the last Mayor. 

The effort, though, has unfortunately been less that should be expected. A number of proposals that affect our neighbourhoods have been included as savings with little or no real analysis of the likely result. This practice of putting in figures without really working through how things will turn out in reality was started by the previous Mayor and, of course, was a major reason why the promised savings were not delivered.

Some of the descriptions have been laughable in their naivety: “Redesign Council services in line with cash limits”; “Run our housing service more efficiently”. There seem to be many occasions where the numbers are made to add up without explaining how the savings will be delivered.

There are also a long list of objectionable cuts in services like libraries, school crossing patrols and swimming pools, but probably the most alarming of the whole lot is the proposal to completely remove the budget for parks over the next three years.

Questions to the administration on how this can be delivered get answers that make the previous examples seem like models of clarity. The many millions of visits to our parks every year by people of all ages, makes the £5m spent on them a lot cheaper per visit than any alternative. However unpalatable, some covering of this could be made with extra open air concerts, but there is a limit on the practicalities for this. A number of valuable parks are completely unsuitable for events and generating enough cash from the few that are is not possible.

The impossibility of parks breaking even was emphasised very clearly when no cabinet member turned up for the most recent, and very well attended, Parks Forum meeting. The Parks Forum are a very knowledgeable and responsible group of parks enthusiasts and volunteers, but they were clearly not impressed by the Council Officer who had been given the job of delivering the message, nor the Council’s lack of ideas about how to make the budget balance.

The mood was not helped by the fact that the Mayor had just unilaterally ripped up the Parks and Green Spaces Strategy by confiscating cash previously ring-fenced for local park improvements, generated by the sale of some green space for social housing. Local Councillors and residents had agreed to a third of a field going for housing, a third for a school playing field and the rest on a park. Not only will local residents now lose their park, but a list of other green spaces in Knowle and Windmill Hill will also suffer. This confiscation of funds was not only grossly unfair, but also killed future trust and co-operation stone dead.

Our parks are ones of the glories of Bristol and offer huge benefits to the health and wellbeing for so many citizens. The Mayor needs to be brought back to reality rapidly before the Council Officers predictions of uncut grass and closed children’s playgrounds becomes the reality in your local park.

Gary Hopkins is a Liberal Democrat Councillor for the ward of Knowle.

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