Just over £100,000 has been pledged to the parks of Brighton and Hove by the City’s Council in an effort to replace and repair children’s playgrounds and parks.
Parks of interest are to include Victoria Recreation Ground in Portslade which will receive replacement swings and a new basket swing for smaller children.
The pledge will also see improvements made to Hangleton Park, which will get a replacement climber unit and Dyke Road Park, which will get a new slide.
Money will also go towards the replacement or repair of surfacing and new gates at a number of play areas.
Nearly £20,000 has been allocated for planting in ‘Green Flag’ parks Easthill Memorial Garden, Preston Park, The Level, Stoneham Park, Kipling Gardens, St Ann’s Well Gardens and Hove Park, as well as improving bins in the city centre parks and signage in Kipling Gardens.
Many have recently complained to us that some of Brighton’s parks have become increasingly run down, with Queens Park seeing a rise in antisocial behaviours. One Mother spoke about finding people using Park toilet facilities as places to ‘shoot up’, and about finding needles in bushes in the park. This news of improvements will not solve this problem, which has been pushed but of The Level, but nevertheless has popped back up elsewhere, but will provide parents and children in Brighton with new and improved spaces and facilities to use.
By improving physical fitness and reducing depression, the presence of green spaces can enhance the health and wellbeing of people living and working in cities. Green spaces also indirectly impact our health by improving air quality and limiting the impact of heatwaves by reducing urban temperatures, so it is clear that our parks are important for our wellbeing.
Spending time in green spaces has been shown to produce levels and patterns of chemicals in the brain associated with low stress and positive impacts on blood pressure. Positive links have also been demonstrated between how well people perform at attention-demanding tasks and time spent, either beforehand or during, in green space
What would you like to see being done to improve our parks? Do you have any great ideas for how our urban environments could be improved