Farsley residents will get the chance to shape the future of Hainsworth Park at a public meeting this week.
The first Friends Of Hainsworth Park meeting is a public meeting with all local residents welcome to attend.
The meeting will ask for people’s general views on Hainsworth Park, explaining how a Friends group could help shape the future of the community green space and encouraging people to join the group.
Voluntary group Farsley Community Initiative were recently successful in bidding for £25,500 of Government money to help maintain and refurbish the green spaces in Farsley. The money will go towards creating a natural play area for older children at the park and the meeting will also help gather ideas for that.
The meeting is being held on Wednesday, 22 May at 7pm in Farsley Community Church.
The new group has been championed by Calverley and Farsley councillor Peter Carlill (Lab). He said:
“Hainsworth Park is a good and well used park – the football pitch is well used and extremely valuable to the community. It is used for great community events like Farsley Festival and Breeze, the playground is good (although somewhat focused on younger children) and it recently had the addition of the gym equipment.
“Even though Hainsworth Park is a good park, it is in the shadow of excellent nearby parks such as Horsforth Hall Park and Pudsey Park, which have different facilities like the skate park, a sand area and a greater range of equipment.
“After speaking to a number of local residents, they feel that the facilities available in our local parks could be improved – and although people will pop out for half an hour to go on the swings, Farsley is crying out for a ‘destination’ park, which local people would visit for the a longer amount of the day, more facilities for a wider range of ages, and also encourages visitors from other areas into the village.
“This, in turn, boosts trade for local cafes and bars, and could encourage more businesses to open in our great spaces such as Sunny Bank Mills.”
Cllr Carlill highlighted the Friends of Middleton Park group, which have promoted more events in the park, encouraged investment, raised money and given a voice to the local community to suggest improvements the council could make.
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