Comments on: Linear Park Childrens Play Area

By: Cultural Vandals! « Moreton and Saughall Massie Matters

Cultural Vandals! « Moreton and Saughall Massie Matters — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:33:36 +0000

[...] of the blog will be aware of our campaign to get Linear Park childrens play area back into use. We were originally told that no funding was available, but after much lobbying [...]

By: John

John — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:43:24 +0000

Whilst a “friends group” obviously has my full support, I can’t help feeling it’s just a fob-off or delaying tactic by the Council.

I don’t know how Sue Charteris’ government department got involved over the libraries fiasco but maybe a similar approach to the department for children, schools and families may be worthwhile especially as they seem to be promoting “Outdoor Play” – http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/campaigns/outdoor_play/

Or perhaps the local healthcare trust considering the NHS’s “Change4Life” initiative encouraging outdoor activities – http://www.nhs.uk/change4life/Pages/Default.aspx

I think expecting anything from this Council without them being pushed would be work wasted.

By: John

John — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:08:31 +0000

As well as the problem in Linear Park there are other play areas in the Borough that are kept padlocked at the weekend (and other times people want to use them) to reduce vandalism!

When challenged, an employee then changes this reason to they can’t have play areas open in the rain as Wirral Council may be sued so it has to be “supervised play”, then padlocked back up!

There are other play areas here though kept open the whole time…

At the relevant Cabinet meeting on Nov 5th, Guy Fawkes, sorry Steve Foulkes, the Leader made the argument that the money spent on the Expo in China was to encourage foreign investment to come to Wirral (and generate future jobs).

The Deputy Chief Exec also presented and supported the decision made by the whole (ten-strong) Cabinet.

However from my perspective, the main reason Wirral seems so keen to go is to because Peel asked them (in order to show support for its Wirral Waters project). Quite how many councillors (if any) or officers £10,000 gets you to China and back I don’t know!

However, Liverpool is also going to have a presence there (although their stall is about 50% subsidised by the NWDA).

Certainly the other £18,000; which’ll lead to “seven business to business meetings”; might eventually lead to some investment… possibly.. but it certainly seems the rest (£10,000) like public money being spent to aid a private company.

Then again Wirral Council has already given a six-figure sum to Peel Holdings over the last couple of years for it to do the baseline study/plans for the Wirral Waters project.

It remains to be seen how many jobs it generates though…. I’m still waiting to see some benefits from Wirral Waters after two years of Wirral Council bending over backwards to accomodate Peel’s wishes.

Have you any views on the proposed privatisation of the parks service? I know the unions are pretty against any further privatisation of Wirral Council services…