Time to get your skates on after seven-year fight
A £97,000 skatepark seven years in the planning could finally be built by the end of June - but a “generation of youngsters” have lost out.
The idea for a facility on the east side of Bath was first mooted in 2012 and the following year a petition with more than 500 signatures was taken to Bath and North East Somerset Council.
More than two-thirds of residents backed it being in Alice Park, but opponents were concerned about the “loss of tranquillity”, and that people would “shun the pay-to-use toilets provided in the park, in favour of urinating in the bushes”.
The campaign was led by mum Joanna Wright, who said last week: “This has been a very long campaign, dogged with a minority resistant against an overwhelming show of community support for the facility and already groups of youngsters have missed out. My son, who stood in front of a full council, aged nine will be 16 in May. A generation has lost an opportunity to play locally.”
She said in an open letter to B&NES Council leader Tim Warren the project had hit “hurdle after hurdle”, most put in place by Conservative councillors.
Liberal Democrat councillor Rob Appleyard said the Alice Park Trust subcommittee, which he sits on, had for too long listened to “a couple of local people vociferously opposed” to the skatepark rather than the hundreds who supported it.
He claimed Tory councillor Geoff Ward, the committee’s chairman for the last two years, “pretty much did everything he could to derail” the project.
Cllr Ward disagreed and said the skate park was just one of several projects he had tried to progress quickly. He said trust committee members had unanimously agreed to accept a small skate park for under-14s “providing it did not dominate the park”.
Cllr Ward told last week’s committee meeting that work on the skatepark is due to start in April, after the completion of a £43,000 project to link up the footpaths that will allow construction workers to access the site. A B&NES Council spokesperson said: “The council has contributed £100,000 towards with project with an additional £30,000 raised by the Alice Park Trust from donations.