The parks maintenance contract is coming to an end in April 2016 and Cllr Jane Edbrooke, cabinet member for culture, has led on reviewing how we take the service forward – especially in light of the parks maintenance specification as set out in Culture 2020.
There is a significant reduction to the parks budget from next year thanks to severe central Government cuts to our funding, and we’ve been determined to find a way forward which safeguards our parks and provides value for money.
We had a really clear steer from residents involved with Brockwell Park and from local Labour Party members that the possibility of taking the grounds maintenance contract in house should be explored as a means to get better value for money from available funds. We raised this aspiration with the cabinet members.
We are therefore really pleased that it has been recommended to cabinet that the parks service be brought back in-house.We believe this is great news – not only will the grounds staff have better terms and conditions than they currently have, we will be able to look towards integration with other services like our grounds maintenance on housing estates.
More information can be found here and we are happy to answer any questions. We expect the decision on this recommendation to take place on 14th December, and anticipate that should we go ahead we will establish a direct labour force from April 2016.
Thurlow Park News 