Question from Cllr Whiting to the Portfolio Holder for Climate Change and Natural Habitat:
- Football at Colwick Rec is contributing to parking chaos in local roads every Saturday morning. With more pitches being used than advertised and insufficient facilities for players, what steps are being taken to reduce the number of pitches in use at Colwick and find suitable facilities elsewhere for the teams?
Minutes:
A question was asked of the Portfolio Holder for Climate Change and Natural Habitat from Councillor Whiting as follows:
“Football at Colwick Rec is contributing to parking chaos in local roads every Saturday morning. With more pitches being used than advertised and insufficient facilities for players, what steps are being taken to reduce the number of pitches in use at Colwick and find suitable facilities elsewhere for the teams?”
Response from Councillor V McCrossen:
Thank you for your question and your keen interest around getting a resolution for Colick. As you are aware, I met with the parish council and with the football team – we were there on Saturday morning when the teams were playing, and we had discussions in regard to the situation.
Colwick recreation ground has three football pitches and a changing pavilion which has been used for over 30 years for the purpose of training and matches and the current incumbent team, Mapperley Allstars, are indeed a very popular team. During the season, 2 of the 3 pitches are used on a Saturday with each pitch hosting 2 junior clubs – 1 for 5 a side and 1 for 9 a side games – and there is an occasional Sunday game too.
Such activities are part of our Gedling plan of health and wellbeing and our objectives in terms of improving health and wellbeing for young people and we would want to continue to encourage our young people in borough to keep healthy and active and improve their mental health. In one sense it is really positive that so many young people are playing football and that Mapperley Allstars have such a large group of children. The parking situation on a Saturday morning when there is heightened use of that facility isn’t good – we do know that since covid and the pandemic the percentage of use decreased so it is good that people are using open spaces and getting out and again is a good thing, but we know that it has increased some of the use of Colwick which is a very popular spot in our borough. We also know that the city introduced car parking charges into Colwick park which is adjacent to the Colwick recreational grounds and of course we as the borough don’t charge for our car parking so it makes our car park looks very attractive and we know that’s a decision that the city council have taken, and we know that our officers have has discussion with the city council and that will remain. We also know that park runs, which also fit in with our health and wellbeing strategy, are very well attended and these unfortunately clash with the children’s football teams.
Our officers have had discussions with them about this to see whether it is possible to put the park run on a different day, but we have been unable to negotiate that. All of these things attract people, so it is a bit of a hotspot and I know this has caused particular concern to residents around parking and antisocial behaviour. It is something that we and the parish council have looked at to see if we can get a resolution. I know that some county councillors have been down to look at the site to look at how they could implement some yellow lines and restrictions to try to help the antisocial parking situation. My understanding is that nothing has happened since then.
What we’ve been doing in terms of pitches and facilities, we continue to try and improve the facilities for our players and teams. The number of games is being limited to four games on a Saturday with one spilling over to Sunday. We know that car parking is an issue and understand that you have sought some additional car parking for the home club and encourage the use of this facility to reduce the number of vehicles parked on the roadside.
In terms of suitable facilities elsewhere, it is good to know that as a borough we have many football teams. The Mapperley Allstars were temporarily relocated to the Colwick recreational site while we were doing work on Gedling county park and the Lambley lane site to improve facilities. They have recently returned to the Lambley lane site so the over 11 teams are now playing there, which is good.
We also face these parking issues in other open spaces in the borough – clearly tolerance and trying to work together is the answer to this problem. We don’t want to ban football in our open spaces and want to keep young people active, so it is about educating the adults and parents around how we can ensure they park in a respectful way.
Looking at a way forward, I would suggest that the borough and parish councils along with the local residents work together to put a proposal together for the county council to see what they can do to improve restrictions in the area. I, as portfolio holder, will continue to work with officers to look for a solution here. I am also working with leadership to see how we can improve the car park in the future. We are not a washed with finances and are trying to do the best we can with what we have. I hear what you are all saying about how difficult it is and we will work together to get this sorted.
Councillor Whiting asked a supplementary question to see if it was known when or if some of the junior teams would be returning to Lambley lane to reduce the number of parking issues at Colwick recreational ground.
Councillor McCrossen confirmed she would check with officers to see if there was any possibility of moving some of the junior teams back to Lambley Lane.