Work is about to start on a £53,000 makeover for a Brighton park, with new play equipment ready to be installed.
Fences, paths and other surfaces will be replaced and the drainage improved, Brighton and Hove City Council said today (Tuesday 14 February).
The work is expected to take about a month at William Clarke Park – also known as the Patch or Nobby’s Park.
The money to pay for the upgrade has come from the contributions paid by the developers behind local building projects. Such payments usually form part of the conditions when planning permission is granted for larger projects.
The council said: “Work is being co-ordinated with the Friends of William Clarke Park, which has its own programme of works scheduled over the next two months.”
Everything is expected to be ready by the start of the Patchfest spring festival on Saturday 22 April and Sunday 23 April.
Councillor Gill Mitchell, who chairs the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee, said: “It’s a pleasure to be able to improve a park at a time when budgets are so tight.
“Getting funding from external sources and the work of these fantastic friends groups will become increasingly important in future.”
Because of cuts in central government funding to councils, the parks department must lose £600,000 of its budget, or 15 per cent, in the years up to 2020.
The park is named after a former councillor and railway worker, William “Nobby” Clarke, who served as the mayor of Brighton in 1975.
The elongated park is formed from a railway cutting which led to a 1,000-yard-long tunnel under Elm Grove, serving the Kemp Town branch line and emerging at the bottom of Freshfield Road. The line closed in 1971.
