Plan to introduce 'guardians' for Darwen parks (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Plan to introduce 'guardians' for Darwen parks

6:30pm Friday 19th March 2010 in

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DARWEN town councillors are considering whether to employ a worker to take care of four of the area’s parks.

The town council may pay for a local person to maintain drains, verges and anything Blackburn with Darwen Council’s park rangers are unable to do.

Coun Dave Smith put forward the plan for Sunnyhurst Wood, Whitehall Park, Bold Venture Park and Ashton Park.

In some parks such as Sunnyhurst Wood, the goodwill of friends groups have seen drains and gullies being cleaned after funding cuts led to a lengthsman being axed two years ago.

Coun Dave Smith said: “It is becoming a task to unblock drains and gullies in four of the areas parks.

“We want to see if we can get a lengthsman which would be paid for out of our budget.

“That’s the basic idea. I can see no reason why this town council can’t undertake this or look at this.

“Lengthsman in parks have proved very, very useful and very, very popular.”

Councillors agreed on the idea in principal but debated on how much the lengthsman would be paid and how many hours they would be expected to cover.

Coun Trevor Maxfield, chair, said: “I think we need to set up a meeting with the friends groups to find out exactly what the needs area.”

Dennis Gillibrand, chairman of the Friends of Sunnyhurst Wood said: "There have been a series of cut backs over the years in the number of people employed to maintain the wood, and as a result there has been an adverse effect in the maintainence.

"The lad who does work in the wood on behalf of the council now does a smashing job, but he's only allowed to do what he's down on a schedule for at particular times of the week.

"He can't respond to any other problems we might have with gullys or paths in different areas, and that's a particular concern we have with the fringes of the woods onto the West Pennine Moors.

"I would very much welcome the return of a lengthsman to do the work in other areas, but it's important that we and other friends' groups would have an input over the extra work he is doing."