2019 AGM- Update from the Chair

Since the 2018 AGM, we have worked so hard and we are making progress, unfortunately, little progress is visible to the community, because we’ve focused on the Sport England bid and moving forward with MUGA, disabled access and Table Tennis Tables project. We’ve upped our game with the council and diverted our time from fundraising events to active applications for funding. We’ve also pushed for work on the Green (improvements to the surface) and consolidated our 5 year plan – MUGA, Green, Playground, Pavilion.

We started compiling the specification for MUGA, TT Tables and DDA footpath with Jane Richardson at Gedling Borough Council in August 2018. The specification allowed us to request soft quotes and feed into the bid for Sport England. This year we upped our meetings with council and developed a portfolio of evidence. Evidence includes: 5 year plan, donations summary, community consultations, letters of support from schools, clubs, councillors, police, Mr Coaker MP, medical practices, etc.  Work is still on-going.

We’ve gathered support for Groups Involvement:

• Wildcats Basketball Club – provision of outreach sessions
• Sycamore Table Tennis Club – provision of outreach sessions
• Cricket Nott’s cricket board (Street Cricket)– provision of cricket equipment and training for a community volunteer
• U3A – Still working on

Match funding:

• September applied to Aviva Community Fund to resurface the green – unsuccessful
• LIS funding to resurface the Green – considered part of Gedling maintenance so we did not apply.
• Applications have been submitted to Building societies Nottingham & Skipton – Spring 2019
• Co-op application for Table Tennis bats and balls – Summer 2019
• Jigsaw Foundation/Gedling Homes – we will resubmit the bid in the Spring 2020

Contact with Gedling Borough Council

• 4 – 6 weekly meetings with Jane Richardson and Fiona Hextall to progress the project
• CIL funding little prospect, feedback from Lewis Widdowson
• Resurfacing bowling green Melvyn Cryer – 2 quotes -£3k seeding £10k turfing
• Freedom of information requests GBC getting somewhere – latest is
  “The Council is usually minded to match fund successful funding bids”
• Having to contact Highways to ask for clearing paths, continually having to contact GBC over maintenance – grass cutting – litter.

Community Involvement

• Meetings open to all and published on website.
• Publicity from BBC Inside Out program – September 2018
• Spooktacular event – October 2018
• Local door-to-door survey for Sport England bid (residents’ consent for MUGA)- March 2019
• Stall at St John’s Church Summer Fair -Community consultation – June 2019
• St John’s Playgroup ‘Last Day” – consult parents at playgroup – July 2019.
• No summer community event at the park
• Tried to establish contact with community groups to support development of the pavilion, put on hold as minimal interest at this stage – We visited Eco-house/ Passive – St Ann’s Allotments.

Funds update

Friends of Onchan Park are very grateful to our local councillors for generously donating from their discretionary funds. Paul Wilkinson, Jim Creamer, Nicki Brooks and Errol Henry have supported Onchan Park activities since the very beginning of the campaign to save the park. Their support has continued up to the present day task of developing the facilities.
Local Gedling Borough councillors Paul and Nicki judged the pavilion art competition in 2017. Here is a link to the original winning artwork.
Nottinghamshire County councillors Jim and Errol presented a cheque at our Summer Fun Day in 2018. 

We have also received funds from local businesses:

• AW Lymn Foundation,
• The Inn at the Bank in Netherfield
• Lindley’s Auto Centre on Oakdale road.

Nottingham City Transport also contributed to the Pavilion Art project when they bought paint for Dak and Dash to complete the artworks. We were so grateful when NCT agreed to support the pavilion project – read about it here.
The Aviva Community Fund donated £500 when the Table Tennis project was a finalist in the awards in 2018. Read about this exciting news here.
We have also received donations from kind members of the public. Anyone can donate via the ‘Friends of’ page using paypal or send a cheque to the Treasurer – details on the Foop page.
Currently, Friends of Onchan Park are working with the council to prepare funding applications to Sport England and other bodies to fund the MUGA, Table Tennis and Disabled Access Path project. Our research using the survey and petition identified a community needs for a multi-use games area, table tennis for use by all ages and abilities.

Watch this space, we are hoping to be able to announce some more good news soon.

Pavilion Project Update

The pavilion project is still in the very early stages of planning. Find out what the Friends of Onchan Park committee have been doing to get this project started.

Interest from local groups

Friends of Onchan Park have been contacting local groups  who may wish to use the building in the future to put on events or run clubs or groups. Fitness instructors, childminders, a church youth worker have all expressed an interest. In particular local nutritionist, Louise Carney-Stillie, is planning to host a women’s wellbeing group to discuss health and nutrition. Have a look at her website here: www.nutritionwithlouise.co.uk/

Pavilion Floor Plans

Terry and Alison measured the existing rooms inside the pavilion and Terry drew up this detailed plan. You can see from the plan that the main hall is 6.6m x 5.5m. However, there is potential to increase this by removing some internal walls and extending out to the porch.

What would you suggest to improve the layout and functionality of the Onchan Park Pavilion?

St Ann’s Visitor Centre Site Visit

We were invited to tour St Ann’s Allotments Visitor Centre by the Site Tenancies and Gardener Engagement Officer, Nicola Hinton. Alison, Pia and Maria  inspected all the eco-friendly features of the building such as – green roof, rain-water harvesting and under-floor heating. They were shown the security shutters, internal layout and handy lockable storage cupboards. There were loads of other useful features to think about when we come to re-design Onchan Park pavilion.

Thanks for hosting us @stannsallotment it was really useful to tour your visitor centre! https://t.co/WlCAA3bHeA

— Onchan Park (@OnchanPark) 8 February 2019

Update- MUGA , Table Tennis and Access gate and path

You might be thinking that Onchan Park looks unchanged compared to this time last year. Here is a quick update about what has been going on behind the scenes.

Update: what have we done already?

We set up a survey to ask people what they wanted to see on the park in 2016. The results of this and our petition showed that local people were passionate about saving the park and pavilion and that they wanted to see a community hub and refurbished facilities. You can still read all the reasons the people wanted to save the park at the Change.org website.  At the Summer Fun Day in 2017 we asked people to vote on which facility they would like to see developed first, the overwhelming winner was the Multi-Use-Games-Area or MUGA. Have a look at our plans from back in August 2017.

During 2017 and 2018 the Friends of Onchan Park have acted on this information and have held several meetings with parks development officers at Gedling Borough Council to put together a specification document. We have also met with several different contractors on site to assist them in putting together a quotation for the work that needs to be done.

As a result of all this work we have information from the community showing the need to redevelop the MUGA, install table tennis tables and provide a new pedestrian gate and access path. We have a specification and plan drawings that allowed us to get four quotes from contractors.

What are the next steps?

The next steps will be to secure funding for this project and consultation with local residents is a big part of this process. We discussed this at our last public meeting in May 2018, the minutes are here if you want to read them. If you live within sight of Onchan Park, we will be visiting you soon to talk about our plans with you. Once we know that everyone is happy with the plans then we can start applying for funding from WREN, Sport England or one of the National Lottery Charities. Once funding has been secured, we can work with the Council to award the contract to the successful bidder.

We are aiming to be awarded funds to be able to transform the MUGA, install table tennis tables and a new pedestrian gate and access path for pushchairs and wheelchairs. We also want to keep the park’s neighbours happy and we can change our plans to ensure that this happens. Above all we want to create a park that we can be proud of that is used by lots of different people to enjoy being in nature and getting active.

We hope that this little update will help you to understand everything that is going on with the park. Everyone is welcome to come along to the public meetings or to offer help with events or activities at the committee meetings.

Aviva Funds

Vote for our project in the Aviva Community Fund!

Voting opened on 23rd October and the deadline is 20th November 2018. We need as many votes as we can to show support for our bid to raise money to re-surface the greenspace at Onchan Park. Go online to register at community-fund.aviva.co.uk. Everyone gets 10 votes for their favourite projects. To find ours search for Onchan Park in the Health and Wellbeing category. Projects within this category should aim to make people feel better on a number of levels, improving physical, mental and emotional health and boosting social interaction. The top three projects with the most votes will go to the final judging stages and we will find out early next year if we will receive any funding.

Please support us once again by giving us your votes to support the development of Onchan Park for the whole community.

Have a look at our project page here. In recent years the old bowling green has been used as a green space for community events and as a play area for local children and teenagers. The surface of the bowling green has degraded and is full of holes and is surrounded by gullies. The Friends of Onchan Park group are looking to regenerate this area with hard-wearing grass which is fit for purpose, to fill in the gullies and re-establish the green space to include suitable, inclusive access so the area can be used by all groups.

Update 14/12/18: Unfortunately, in spite of all the support and votes that we received, we didn’t make it to the final of the Aviva Community Fund this year.

Pavilion Development Opportunity

Opportunity to develop Onchan Park Pavilion and Greenspace for your community group

As you know Onchan Park Pavilion is located in the centre of Onchan Park (otherwise know as Oakdale Road Recreation Ground) is currently in a state of disrepair and unable to be used.  Friends of Onchan Park would like to see the regeneration of the pavilion along with the transformation of the rest of the park.

Ideally we’d like the building to serve as a community hub for local groups.  We would like to create a building that would meet the needs of the groups who would like to use the space.  At the same time we would like to create a space that will be very cost efficient to run, perhaps incorporating solar and wind power. Given the extent of likely building works we will need to submit bids for charity funding.  To support our bid we will be required to show the need for the works and how the project will benefit the community.  We think the best way to do this is by involving local groups in the planning stages to create the ultimate community hub.

The space…

The pavilion building has a large central room, with double doors opening onto the porch facing the green space. These doors are currently boarded up and the outside is decorated with artwork to deter vandalism- read all about the pavilion transformation project here. There is ramped access to the side door which is the main access point for the building at the moment. The total internal dimensions are 17.8 metres by 7.1 metres, a total of 126 square metres.

Inside there is a kitchen, toilets and several smaller rooms which were once used as changing rooms or storage rooms for the bowls players. These smaller rooms could be knocked together to form one large room. Have a look at some of the awards boards that are still on the walls on our Memories page.

Outside there are two small tarmac car parks within the park. The green space is an old bowling green measuring 40m x 40m. There are mature trees, hedges and flower borders on the park as well as the children’s playground and two sports courts. Details about the trees and hedges are described here: trees-and-hedges-survey.

We need you!

Friends of Onchan Park conducted a survey which showed the need for a community hub in the area sometimes known as ‘Carlton Village’ or the Carlton district ward. Our community wants: keep fit, yoga, youth clubs, book club, education groups, parent and baby groups, art class, zumba, bootcamp and holiday clubs. What could you offer?

We need community groups to come forward to be stakeholders in the pavilion development project so that the building can be renovated to suit your needs. We would like to hold a meeting with interested groups to try to establish a starting point. 

Please respond in the comments or email parkonchan@gmail.com if you would like to be involved. If possible, please give details such as: Name of group, Activities offered (with possible days and times), Facilities required, Space required. We would love to hear from you.

Accessible path to tennis court planned

Turn up and play tennis for free at Onchan Park: fully accessible path planned.

There is a full-size, free tennis court at Onchan Park. There is no need to book, it is open all day and the net will stay up all year round. Gedling Borough Council replaced the net and posts in February 2017 after our survey showed a need for this facility. The net has been in place for two summers now and is well used.
If you wish, you can donate to Friends of Onchan Park via PayPal, sending a message that the donation is for the tennis facility. In no way do we expect donations to use the tennis court, however people have asked for a way to donate. Here is the link to donate: Donate to Friends of Onchan Park.
A fully accessible path from a new pedestrian gate near the vehicle access gate will be installed with the MUGA project. More details on this exciting development soon. At the moment the court is not accessible with a wheelchair and pushchair access is difficult as there are steps to navigate.
Have a quick look at the news from Feb 2017 which has details about buses and parking for Onchan Park: How to get to Onchan Park.
Have you played tennis during the long hot summer of 2018? Let us know in the comments.

2018 Summer Festival

Minutes from Public Meeting 16/05/18

Onchan Park Public Meeting Minutes

Wednesday 16th May at 6.30pm at Saint John’s Church

Present:- Committee Members, Local and County Councillors, Members of the Community

Apologises:- 2 committee members and the vicar from St John’s Church

The Chair gave the group an update regarding saving the park and where we are going with the park.

She also mentioned there had been changes to the committees as two members had left and also one from events. A new events committee chair had been appointed and the group had set up new MUGA committee, this committee had a meeting with the council on Monday 14th May to discuss the proposed MUGA site.

We confirmed that the Summer Fun Day would be held on Sunday 24th June and that we would be organising the Halloween Spooktacular for October. The summer fun day was nearly organised just some last minute things need completing. The events meetings are about once a quarter and again we need volunteers to help with stalls and leaflet drops – the group does have a social media presence and this is used to help communicate with the community.

We do have a website which has 7 pages with details of events and news and lots of photos. Our Facebook page is now called “Friends of Onchan Park”. We have 941 members, we also have 160 followers on twitter and 737 tweets which are mostly about our events and connecting with schools, businesses and organisation. We also email 272 supporters about events and meetings.

We sent out leaflets to the local community about the public meeting. We are also linked with Gedling Eye as they are also willing to share our details.

Gedling Borough Council gave us 200 daffodil bulbs which were planted in December 2017 with help from the committee members and local children and adults. We also have received seed packs from Grow Wild and we are hoping to plant them around the park to create patches of wild flowers. As the council own the park we need to check with them regarding staging events and doing any activities on the park like litter picking.

We receive support from the council with regard to maintenance and grass cutting and they also help with funding bids. We also receive support from our local councillors as well as the county councillors we have received donations from them to help with administration and also for our table tennis fund. They also helped save the park and we did have support from the local MP and Police and Crime Commissioner. We do get financial support from events but the events are mainly put on to encourage the community onto the park. We need more local groups to use the park and maybe have an interest in using the pavilion.

We are currently trying to secure funding for our table tennis project as this was one of the main activities the community wanted on the park, we have applied to Aviva for funding, we did receive £500 from them and we made it to the finals but did not win to get the full funding available.

We also submitted a bid to LIS (Local Improvement Scheme) the winning bids will be announced on 18^th May. We are always looking at funding ideas for different projects. We cannot employ anyone to help with funding bids. Nottingham City Transport helped with the murals that were painted on the pavilion.

The MUGA (Multi Use Gaming Area) is also a priority and a separate committee has been set up to look at funding and working with the council. A meeting was held with the council on Monday 14th May to discuss the site. We are hoping to use the existing site next to Greenhill Road, we have arranged for a site visit with the council to check the existing footprint. The MUGA needs to be 30 metres away from residents, we have approached the residents around the park and there have not been any objections to the MUGA we are proposing to arrange for a form to be completed by the residents which will go with our funding bid showing no objection for our MUGA. The council has given us the names of providers and we need to do a detailed specification. We are hoping to provide on the MUGA football, cricket and basketball as these were the most popular activities requested by the community and from the schools who were approached. This will be an expensive item for the park but will be really useful and it is needed together with the table tennis tables. We are also looking at disabled access to the MUGA site and this will be included in the bid.

The pavilion is a problem as it is such a big item that needs re-development and to be made into some kind community building for use by local groups. The pavilion attracts anti-social behaviour as it is an easy target which is why all the windows were boarded up. We need community groups to use the pavilion. As the council still own the building they will want to charge rent for the up keep.

Community links – we need help from the community to keep the park going. We are to appear on the Inside Out programme in the Autumn, the programme is looking at the regeneration of parks and will be filming our summer fun day and a committee meeting. The last time we had filming on the park for the mural event a local building company offered to repair the roof after a spate of vandalism.

Anti-social behaviour on the park has led to damage to the pavilion and glass and litter around the park, the committee are looking at having a meeting with the local PSO’s and the ASB coordinator at the council, we need to look at ways of deterring the antisocial behaviour whether we put up signs or look at lighting the pavilion at night with security lighting.

AOB

This meeting was shared on Twitter and Facebook and the mystery prize was a bottle of prosecco which will be awarded at the fun day.

The meeting ended at 7.50pm

Next meeting is the AGM on Wednesday 27th June 2018 at St John’s Church, Oakdale Road at 6.30pm

Aviva Community Fund Result

Friends of Onchan Park Table Tennis Fund

– Update 16/01/18 – The judges haven’t chosen our project to receive funding. However, to recognise our achievement in reaching the finals, Aviva are going to donate £500 to our project. 

In 2016 we saved Onchan Park, last year we entered the Aviva Community Fund to bid for funding for a Table Tennis area for community use. We had amazing support from local people and supporters in 2016 and votes from supporters got our project to the finals of the process. The judges didn’t choose our project to receive the full funding, but Aviva will donate £500 towards developing facilities at the park. So it’s back to the drawing board for the table tennis bid and watch this space for the next project!

Outdoor table tennis would be a great addition to Onchan Park as it’s such an inclusive activity for all ages and abilities. It would really encourage the whole community to make use of Onchan Park in an area of the park that needs regeneration.