We salute the park saviours
Pruning, picking up litter and even patrolling at night . . . how a volunteer army of 300,000 keep open precious green spaces that have been abandoned by councils
LIKE many of her neighbours, Chrisie Byrne was horrified when she discovered that developers wanted to concrete over her local park.
The mother of three was in the midst of restoring the 130- acre Walton Hall Park in Liverpool to its former glory after years of neglect. The council had gone from employing 15 full-time park staff to occasionally mowing the grass.
Along with 30 other volunteers, Chrisie spent months painstakingly pruning overgrown bushes, planting shrubs, clearing walkways, replacing benches and picking up litter. Despite their efforts, the council entered talks to turn the space into a new stadium for Everton Football Club, and build 1,000 homes, shops, a 150-bedroom hotel, school and police station.
With t heir hard work under threat, Chrisie’s volunteer group launched an unlikely fightback. ‘For two years, we were busy gardening in the daytime and then waving placards outside council meetings in the evening,’ she says.
Their battle against the £300 million development was finally won in May 2016 when the plans were withdrawn. Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson later announced that the park would never be built on.
Chrisie’s team of volunteers has since grown to 547 members and they prune, plant, paint and tidy up seven days a week.
They are among hundreds of thousands of unpaid volunteers across the country working tirelessly to keep parks running as councils allow green spaces to fall into disrepair.
The Mail on Sunday’s Save Our Parks campaign has revealed that one in three parks no longer has any staff on site and three-quarters of councils have cut back on park maintenance in the past two years.
Now we can reveal t hat t he number of park volunteers has rocketed in just two decades – from a few thousand in the 1990s to more than 300,000 today.
Residents say they have felt compelled to step in after seeing their beloved green spaces become no- go zones, riddled with kerb crawlers, overflowing bins and dangerous play equipment.
Dave Morris, chairman of the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces, which represents 6,000 park groups, says: ‘ Each group has an average of 50 members. The movement has been growing dramatically and friends groups now provide a vital role in saving our parks, but there is only so much volunteers can do. They can never replace proper professional management.
‘Parks are lacking proper invest- ment and urgently need resources because we are facing another crisis and period of decline after a similar thing happened in the 1990s.
‘It’s a difficult time for groups but The Mail on Sunday’s campaign is helping to keep up morale.’
When volunteers started rejuvenating Walton Hall Park, it had only three benches and 13 bins. Teenagers said they wanted somewhere to sit, so volunteers created seats from trees that needed felling.
Now the council is working in partnership with the group, and has supplied 15 new benches and 28 new bins in locations recommended
by volunteers. The council has also given the group its own area to grow s eeds underpolytunnels before planting them in the park.
Chrisie says: ‘We have worked with four junior schools and a high school, getting children interested in gardening and wildlife. When we started the crime rate here was very high but people are taking pride in the area now.’
Dave Morris has spearheaded the transformation of his own local park in Tottenham, North London. The former postman, 64, says: ‘About 17 years ago, the Lordship Recreation Ground had gone into serious decline due to cuts. Flowerbeds had been removed and buildings were semi-derelict. Staff had been withdrawn and as a result anti-social behaviour had increased, creating a vicious circle with fewer people using it because it was not an attractive place.’
After setting up the Friends of Lordship Recreation Ground, he helped bring in millions of pounds in grants to spruce up the lake and paths, create nesting areas for ducks, and install picnic tables.
Then overgrown trees and bushes were cut back, woodchip paths were laid, and glades for wild flowers were created. The park is now used by 900,000 people a year compared to 350,000 a decade ago. Dave says: ‘For years I have worked two or three days a week in the park and it has all been worth it.’
Cash-strapped councils are keen for volunteers to step in as it means they do not have to spend as much on maintaining spaces. Brighton and Hove Council has mobilised an army of 100 volunteers to help pick up litter. In London, 15,000 people planted 80,000 trees recently as part of a bid to transform the capital into a National Park City.