Community group wins park reprieve at council meeting

By James Fletcher

Friends of Hillsborough Park Facebook group currently has the upper hand against the new development plans of Hillsborough Park.

Sheffield City Council submitted the plans for the redevelopment of the park, with additional funding coming from Sports England, Law Tennis Association and current occupiers of the already existing tennis courts, Courtside.

The plans would increase the tennis courts by a further three, add toilets and a café along with a mini golf area and indoor padel tennis. The plans were put forward after feedback from the local community asking for the site to be redeveloped. Still, they never envisaged they would be priced out of the area for good with the new plans set to fence the area off for what will be a ‘pay to play’ scheme.

This sparked the community into action to stop the plans from ever coming to fruition, the Friends of Hillsborough Park started a petition and currently had over 1,000 signatures ahead of a council meeting with the number still rising.

Andy Chaplin spoke on behalf of the group at the meeting, making the thoughts from the community clear as he said,

“We believe this commercialisation of a public park, with little regard for those people in Hillsborough community who currently use the Multi Use Game Area (MUGA) for free. With the current cost of living crisis, families and communities struggling with high energy bills and high demand for food banks. We believe that these plans will leave our community worse off.”

The group asked the committee to send the proposal back to the managers so they can rethink their plans and come up with new plans that will benefit everyone in the community. The park also holds the city’s only cycling for the disabled and people with long-term health conditions.

Tom Collister from cycling 4 All also voiced his concerns about the plans in the meeting,

“Is the committee comfortable with approving a contract which will negatively affect the level and quality of service we are able to offer, as well as put us in conflict with other casual users of the MUGA due to its much reduced size?”

The committee started by praising the scheme for all the great work they have been doing and stated that it will work with them to ensure they can still operate within the new plans.

The final outcome of the meeting saw the new plans put on hold allowing time to reconsider plans.