York parks need to have improved accessibility, says campaigner

City of York Council would look at parks in deprived areas, those with long-standing maintenance issues, old play equipment and war memorials that need restoring under a proposed criteria for awarding funding.

Disability rights activist Flick Williams told councillors the need for parks and play equipment to be made accessible should be made clear if they are chosen for improvement funding.

Dave Meigh, the council’s parks lead, told councillors details of how parks are accessed, whether suitable equipment is installed and other considerations would be taken into account at selected sites.

It comes as the council’s Place Scrutiny Committee discussed the £500,000 fund on Tuesday, June 24.

The funding for improvements over the next two years was approved in February as part of the council’s Labour administration’s budget proposals for the current financial year.

A council report stated the parks would be scored against a criteria to help decide which ones will get a share of the funding.

Parks within areas with high Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores and those which require features such as footpaths maintaining are among those more likely to be awarded funding.

Those with play equipment which is at least 15 years old or are in need of landscaping improvements such as removing old fences would also be favoured.

Funding would also be awarded to help parks which were aiming to be awarded or keep Green Flag status.

The council would also look at sites where it could get extra funding including Lottery grants or Section 106 contributions from developers.

The report also recommends that the council assesses war memorials in York parks for a programme of possible improvement works.

A previous round of restoration works was carried out for the centenery of the First World War between 2014 and 2018.

A final draft of the criteria is set to go before the council’s executive in July.

Council officers would then draw up a list of parks chosen for a share of the funds which would be put back to the executive for approval.

Councillors were told on Tuesday that up to 30 parks may be chosen for improvement works.

There are around 90 equipped play areas across York half of which are overseen by the council, along with the city’s parks.

Disability campaigner Ms Williams said councillors must also consider the accessibility of parks.

The activist said: “It should be obvious when using indices of social deprivation that these will include a higher proportion of both disabled adults and children than the general population.

“The need for accessibility to all parks and green spaces needs to be
clearly spelled out.

“And then we get to play equipment itself, not every piece of equipment can be accessible to every child, but play equipment has advanced enormously over the last 20 years.”

Council head of parks and open spaces Mr Meigh said many of the existing issues with accessibility in York parks stemmed from historically poor decision making.

The council officer said: “Not every piece of kit is suitable for everybody, but is there a range of opportunity for a variety of uses?

“That’s just focusing on play equipment, some of this is on access to the site and what you’re going to do when you get to the site, we’re fortunate that most of our sites in York are flat and we have very few steps in our parks.

“Depending on what gets selected we’ll look at fine tuning and work up the detail to meet suitable standards.”