Anyone else’s area/local parks going like this?

[EmmaB101]

Really starting to see a decline and I’m wondering if it’s like this in a lot of places.

Local parks, although we do still have many wonderful green spaces. Over the past 5 years or so a lot of the play equipment has become broken/been removed and is simply not being replaced. One of our amazing country parks is a shadow of how it was 10 years ago, there is hardly any of the play equipment left.

Potholes, potholes have long been an issue, but they are becoming horrendous and they haven’t been repaired for months.

E bikes causing havoc riding on pavements and cycle paths.

Beggars outside every supermarket and at traffic lights.

Complete decline of the high street, virtually all of the shops have gone leaving only betting shops, nail bars, charity shops and takeaways.

I wonder if there anywhere left that isn’t semi rural that isn’t like this.

The playgrounds in my main park were suffering but it galvanised the local community. Campaigns, fundraising, grant applications etc resulted in 2 brand new play areas with a new skate park on the way. If it's a big enough problem to the community then the community can resolve it.

If everyone does online shopping then obviously the shops on the high street will close.

The councils haven’t got enough money, and maintenance of public spaces is an area where they have had to cut back dramatically.

In our park they have reduced the frequency of mowing the grass, and they don’t cut round the trees now as it is too time consuming. Verges are cut once a year.

Regarding antisocial behaviour and beggars - the police and council don’t have the resources to deal with them so they’re just de-prioritised issues.

It’s crap - council budgets are being slashed while their costs keep growing. No one seems to have a solution for this.

Council budgets are being used to pay for the stuff they have to - the SEN bill in education and adult social care. Anything that’s not legally mandated is just disappearing. It’s a disgrace.

No, the parks are generally better than they were when I moved to this area 30 years ago as is the high street in some respects though not others - Obviously the demise of the likes of Debenhams and BHS have left big spaces but it’s been semi-pedestrianised, there’s more cafes etc, generally a nicer environment.

Some of the work in parts of the parks and adjoining nature reserves is done by volunteer groups, maybe there’s things you could do to help improve your area? Sometimes people complain ‘why don’t they’ do something about…’ without considering whether the ‘they’ could be themself in some way.

There's a simple solution. Stand as a local Councillor demanding a rise in Council Tax to pay for better park maintenance.

I don’t think that realistically, me standing as a councillor is a simple solution to all of the issues below by any means.

I'm a parish councillor. We have three play areas in our village including a large recreation ground with football pitches, tennis courts etc. We revamped one of the play areas in a small park last year. It cost a lot, we used some of our funds and also applied for a grant to help. It looks great and is really well used.

We are now trying to get the funding sorted to revamp the equipment in the large park but that will be much more costly as there's far more of it. We have held some fundraising events and again will apply for grant funding, but we are debating whether we need to increase our precept next year. No one wants their council tax to rise but everyone is keen to moan about facilities going downhill.

Two years ago we put a toilet into the large park, with changing facilities etc. The changing bench was vandalised within 2 months so we didn't replace it as what's the point. We have just taken the decision to close the toilet at 6pm each night rather than 8pm because there's constant ASB going on in the evenings. And again lots of people are moaning that they can't access the toilet after 6pm.

We have 2 parish councillor vacancies and can't recruit to them

No, our local park has just had all new equipment, and also they’ve just started a Park Run so volunteers have been making a route. However i will say that half of our local shops are empty and our nearest city has so many homeless people and trying to get any help for our elderly parent who had a severe stroke has been a nightmare.
15 years of a Tory goverment will do that to a country.

There's a tradition in the city park to go and take some bin liners when the new students arrive in September/October, pick up after yourself and do a bit of litter picking. Many of them pick up the habit themselves. But the wilder country park no longer feels safe to use and smells like a toilet, especially since the council ran out of money and closed the toilets.
There's a public green space surrounded by houses and the residents got some lottery money to overhaul it, they had to set up a committee and it took several years to organise. Not everyone has the resources to be able to do that. Now some of the residents are a bit possessive about it, its caused some friction.

Our area is very much the same. Parks are in poor condition and poorly maintained. Everywhere is overgrown - especially the grass verges.

Our town centre is just shut up shops, vape shops, junk shops, charity shops, £ shops and money laundering fronts. We've lost all our lovely independent shops that were previously all well used, people would come for miles to shop in some of them (there used to be loads of independent shops selling women's wear, children's wear, shoes, children's shoes, opticians, chemists, menswear, bridal shop, handmade furniture, handmade blinds, lovely quality furniture and furnishings, giftware you name it we had it as an independent). There are homeless and junkies everywhere. The once thriving market is down to 5 stalls on a Thursday (on a nice sunny day, if it rains it's 3 stalls for 3 hours, and 7 stalls on a Saturday.

We are supposedly a "quaint market town".

Does anybody want to pay more tax? Nooooooo, never, we hate taxes. And decline of public services is the result. Can't have it both ways.

No, the parks where I live are not like this. But we have a parish council who precept separately to pay for a lot of these nice to have things. In fact they are looking to develop new park provision in addition to what we already have.

Play equipment is very expensive to replace so if vandalized continuously, eventually it won't be replaced. Blame your local vandals.

There are beggars in the city centre but not here.

Our high street has changed- more barbers, mini marts and takeaways and fewer other shops; but we still have an independent butchers, greengrocers, opticians etc. This isn't really political though is it- if people do most shopping online or in supermarkets or out of town retail parks, then there won't be as many High Street shops will there?

We are suburban, not semi-rural.

I agree with you, OP; although for a lot of our local shops, it isn't traditional beggars but rather charities that block and accost you on your way in, wanting to ' just ask you a question', which coincidentally always seems to be 'can you give me your bank details and set up a direct debit for my random charity'.

The potholes and rough road surfaces are appalling. At the very least, councils should be forced to spray paint all reported potholes bright pink whilst they're pending repair - so that it's clear for everybody to see at a glance just how much pink there is and how little grey.

Then, to add insult to injury, councils go and install horrific speed bumps that scrape our exhaust, no matter how slowly you go over them. Speed bumps are meant to make you slow down to a reasonable speed; not to force you to virtually stop and cause long lines of static traffic belching out fumes in the town.

Like all the potholes weren't already doing the job of slowing drivers down for them anyway!

The parks are pretty good where I live and they are enjoyed by people from all walks of life- it’s really nice. The shops are dire, and it’s rapidly becoming worse. Turkish barbers, nail bars, ‘international stores’ and vape shops. They are ugly and do nothing positive for the community. It’s really sad.

I’m sure that a lot of the shops are just shop fronts for money laundering.

There are so many barbers, takeaways, convenience stores with piled high bottled water, brooms and other random items.

Amazingly our bankrupt council has found the money to cut the verges this year. As a result the whole place looks tidier and more well kept.

I do think that scruffy verges lead to people giving less of a shit and results in more littering.

The parks are reasonably well maintained and many green spaces have long meadow type grasslands with wide paths mown through them so that people can walk. So the insects do have somewhere to go rather than the verges.

I’m just shocked how quickly it’s all gone downhill. My local town has always been a bit scruffy but there was a LOT of redevelopment in the 2000s.

There were proper shops on the high street. A few clothes shops, stationery, shoe shops.

When my son was born in 2007 the parks were pretty amazing and to be fair they are still lovely for a stroll and mostly litter free. But the play equipment is very rapidly disappearing now. I don’t think it’s been vandalised tbh I think it’s wear and tear and just isn’t going to be replaced.

I live somewhere semi-rural and, with the exception of the e-bikes, it's pretty much as you described.

Anything managed by a local authority (aka a social care service that also empties bins) is now running on fumes, they've long since cut everything to the bone and burned through their reserves.

Doesn't really work though, as any such rise in council tax would immediately be swallowed up by the spiralling cost of the legally-mandated services LAs have to provide - adult social care, SEN provision etc. What you REALLY need to do is beome an MP, form a government and actually sort out social care funding in the UK, but the last person to try that was Theresa May and it didn't end well.

Why do verges need to be trimmed within an inch of their life? Annually should improve biodiversity - look at all the areas where orchids etc are mown regularly for no good reason or health and safety. Mown grass is not essential for areas not being walked on.

What annoys me is that in our formal parks people just cut through planted areas causing erosion on the sloping bits and damaging plants. Some people do not appreciate that shared space is for everyone's benefit.

This is great when the local residents have the resources to do so. My PIL live in a very affluent area and their local village community managed to secure funding for an amazing playground to serve the approximately 30 children who live there. Unfortunately where I live, there are lots of people struggling to keep a roof over their heads and feed their kids. They have neither the time or the money to be out campaigning and donating to a new playground. The community groups that exist here (and there are lots, given we have less than 8k residents) are focused on things like warm spaces for poor residents in the winter, food banks, clothes swaps, SEND groups etc. But arguably their children are in far greater need of a playground, not having the benefit of large private gardens and play equipment of their own as my PIL's neighbours do. Children deserve decently maintained public spaces to play in, even when their parents are poor.

My nearest one is ok. It doesn't have a playground. The council are encouraged to mow later (they only recently mowed) for environmental reasons. (Wild flowers and bees.) Volunteers do the woodland management that's needed.
My local small town is fine, but the nearest big shops are croydon which is dire. They shut down a lot of shops to build a new Westfield then that never happened.