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.

Where did the affluent village secure funding from? Or did they raise it themselves?

No they didn't raise it. Part of it was a grant, part of it was from the council.

My local parks are great, there have always been beggars outside supermarkets and ebikes are a great alternative to cars

I can’t tell if you’re being deliberately obtuse.

Are you honestly saying that there has been no decline?

E bikes aren’t great when they are being ridden dangerously on pavements and cycle paths, at high speeds having been modified. Usual by men in balaclavas with no helmets. Terrorising children, elderly and dog walkers.

Yes it’s just great 🙄

We have a splash park l used to take dd to when she was little ( born 2006) it was all brand new then.

It’s never open now, or stuff needs mending. It’s been shut for most of the last 4 summers.

However in a town local to us and part of the same Metropolitan authority as the one near me is always open.

Depends on the area. Our city got a load of money for the parks and they were all upgraded and now look amazing. New equipment, new design, upgrades on tennis courts, new paddle courts, new skate parks etc.

Yes, I hate it. Park looks an absolute mess, and is now very crowded and bikes zooming through it and the loos are repellant.The downward slide has been so fast. It’s shit.

Our local community groups do so much from litter picking, gardening communal areas and raising money for things like the parks. Recently they got the highways agency to replace fencing but it took someone to notice, do a bit of digging into ownership and then chase it up.

My advise to anyone looking to move to a new area is to check out how active local groups are, it makes a bigger difference to your town or village than who the council or councillor are.

We’re seeing the logical outcome of having had the Tories as government for fourteen years. Finding to local government was dramatically cut, and economic policy overall was geared at propping up the interests of the rich, keeping house prices and land values high, and, of course, their obsession with Brexit — which has made us all significantly poorer, and of which we’re all now starting to see the results. Our currency has devalued and investment in the U.K. is significantly reduced in all sorts of ways.

So if you know anyone who was a Tory voter or a Brexit voter, you can thank them for the current situation.

Not that I’m massively impressed by Labour so far either. They don’t seem to have any grip on what to do with the economy we’ve been left with. Rejoining the EU would be a start, but your average U.K. voter doesn’t like that idea even as the negative impacts of Brexit become clear all around us.

I don’t recognise this at all from where I live (small town by a bigger city). Parks are good, less homelessness than a few years ago, good range of shops. Seems the same when I visit friends too. This whole ‘Britain is shit’ idea that’s being repeated endlessly seems odd to me.
@Icecreamandcoffee I’m a bit puzzled by your well used shops closing. Why would a shop with lots of customers close?

The parks in my area have massively improved because we set up a volunteer environmental group. It does suck that thr council aren't paying for it but we do have lottery funding. Maybe this is something you could think about doing to stop everything falling into disrepair?

Well-used shops with lots of customers close when hit by soaring rents, a business rates system that's not fit for purpose, increases in employer NI contributions and inflation raising the cost of doing business, If small local businesses raise their costs to cover the huge increase in outgoings they've faced over the past decade, they very quickly stop being well-used.

Not that puzzling, surely. Our nearest town centre has been decimated because the council moved all the retailers off the high street to make way for a multi-million pound project which was subsequently shelved. So like @Icecreamandcoffee , all we have left is charity shops, Turkish barbers and vape shops. At least one other PP on this thread has described similar in their town (a new Westfield Centre that never materialised I think). There's also the problem of out of town retail parks which have helped kill the high street up and down the country, leaving town centres rundown and empty. I can't believe you haven't seen this anywhere, let alone are puzzled by it.

Where about are you?

I didn’t say Britain is shit, I don’t think Britain is shit.

But I have seen a big decline in the things mentioned in my city and in a neighbouring town.

I do wonder whether is my area or whether it’s across the country.

The parks are all being renovated thanks to the town taking over the management from the county and the town precept now covering the cost (yes it doubled!) there’s not many empty shops but we have so many coffee shops now, all busy! Not many beggars because the council to give them credit sends a minibus to pick them up from our town to take them to the hostel which is two towns away, magically faced with this they seem to be able to return to the nearby city on their own accord!

Or how about council leaders be held accountable for the mismanagement of billions of pounds they are given to provide good quality public services. Top heavy with senior executives and bottom light with essential staff. I’ve seen with my own eyes the money and resources wasted by these inadequates

The parks near me are lovely but this mainly down to parks having volunteer groups who do stuff and put pressure on the council to maintain.

Our local little park (swings/slides type place) has a community tram who are continually fund raising to keep decent equipment. So it's done on the goodwill of the community...

When I moved here there was an Adams, Clarkes, JD, Woolworths, Argos, New Look, Dorothy Perkins, stationery shops, WHSmith, Boots, plus lots of independents, curtain shops, uniform shops, perfume shops, body care, card shops, butchers and much more. Admittedly not high end and many of those shops have disappeared altogether, but you could go out and get a few bits you needed.

I think this is purely down to online shopping and lack of parking. On a good note there are two new bustling retail parks opened and these seem to be much easier and more popular.

But it does mean that the high street is a sorry sight.

Because the verges are not full of lovely wildflowers attracting bees and butterflies they are just long grass and dock leaves which then seed into the cracks in pathways and pavements which makes the whole are look uncared for and down at heel, it really annoys me when councils put up a “bee friendly” sign when there is not a flower in sight, just weeds and long grass it’s a convenient excuse for the council to do fuck all.

I remember the days of “Keep Britain Tidy” a big push by the government not to litter and it worked too, you would be shamed by someone if you did drop litter nowadays you wouldn’t dare approach someone in case they had a knife, standards and respect have dropped so far now it’s irredeemable, it’s quite upsetting.

16 years of Tory government will do that

Austerity cut council budgets by about a third, this combined with adult social care costs have essentially wiped out any discretionary spending they may have had

It'll take at least a decade to reverse the damage they did

Whereabouts are you?

Eric Pickles, specifically, said the fact prudent councils held reserves "proved" they were profiligate, demanded they spend them and then cut their funding. And for few years everyone kind of bumbled through on goodwill and overtime and stuff being relatively new. But then things started to break and there was no money to fix them, and before you knew it everything snowballed into the potholed nightmare LAs now have to deal with, twinned (as you say) with the endlessly spiralling cost of social care and SEN provision.

Our local park used to be a no go. Community fundraising, partnerships with businesses to help with their SV requirements and several years later we have two play parks, one for younger kids and one for older. Both fully accessible and not seperated as accessible / non accessible. It has been a huge success.

the potholes have been repaired at least three times but seem to be ok now assume that is weather related.

The council put the rates up by a huge amount. Lots of the landlords of the shops also put their rents up significantly a few months after the rent rise. The council put parking up so it's now very expensive to park in town.

The independent shops do all still exist, they are now in small sheds/ concessions at either the local garden centre, or the local destination cafe with lakes (someone bought an ex small farm with lots of outbuildings in a nearby village and have made a glamping business, built some fishing lakes, made a lovely cafe all with local produce, teamed up with a local ice cream parlour to make a mini ice cream parlour, a few goats chickens and sheep near the parlour and cafe, and rented all the outbuildings out to independent businesses) and now benefit from free parking.