Playground refurbishment

Vast lobbying and networking work by Karen Sillence raised £103K of funds, and we were assigned a council project manager to work with the architect Alex Fraser. Unfortunately, the council scaled back our ambitions and almost all green was taken out and replaced by macadam or macadam covered with rubber, although the bushes around the revamped playground remained. This was partly because of a misunderstanding about how our section 106 / Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) money could be spent. The council project manager erroneously believed it could not be spent on "maintenance", for instance of a grassed area. This was incorrect (see the legislation which expands a 2012 amendment).

But at the last minute, due to a chance meeting with deputy mayor Asher Craig, part of the original plan for grass was restored.

Here are the plans, in time-sequence. More detailed pdf versions are attached below.

Plans as at December 2016:

Plans as they stood in late September 2017:

Note how the green turned brown, indicating macadam covered with rubber, or blue, indicating macadam. Yep, afraid so. Awful.

Grass all gone, gone.

Update 31 October 2017: due to a chance meeting with Deputy Mayor Asher Craig, who was grumbled at by Matthew (!), the council officers altered the plans to include more green. Yay!