Recent News
St. Ives Adventure Play Area
8 May 2009
The new, innovative play area has recently opened at St. Ives Estate, Harden. It provides challenging, exciting adventurous play more in keeping with its woodland setting and emphasise play in a natural environment.
The new attraction will be a huge draw for local children and young people as well as visitors to the beautiful St Ives Estate.
The new adventurous play equipment includes high towers, rope bridge, state of the art tyre swings, maypole, sand play & tyre swing! This is complimented by natural play elements such as rocks, fallen trees and a dry river bed!
Improvements also include new fencing and entrances, access pathways via boardwalks and surfacing to aid wheelchairs and pushchair access and a picnic area.
Keighley Urban Skatepark
8 May 2009
A state of the art concrete urban skate park will be built on the site adjacent to Oakbank School, Keighley. It will be a new, innovative and up to the minute designed concrete skate area for boarding, rollerblading and biking at cost of £130,000.
Download Keighley Urban Skatepark Visual 1 (PDF 389kb)
Download Keighley Urban Skatepark Visual 2 (PDF 255kb)
Myrtle Park Skate Park
8 May 2009
Work has started on a £70,000 skatepark in Myrtle Park, Bingley. Youngsters have been involved from the start in what they want to see in the skatepark and they even got chance to vote for the winning design.
The design reflects a concrete urban street layout and incorporates quarterpipes, a banana curb, lift off curb combi with grind rails and fun boxes.
The skatepark will be next to the new play area in the park and is being funded from lottery money and local developers.
Coun Anne Hawkesworth, Executive Member for the Environment, said: "This will be a great facility for young people who have been involved in the project from the word go. They will have somewhere special they can go in the park.
"Hopefully it will alleviate problems raised at neighbourhood forums about youngsters skateboarding in the shopping area."
The local children who helped with the plans were from Bingley Youth Project and Bradford and Keighley Youth Parliament.
Works should be complete by the end of May 2009.
Download the Myrtle Skate Park Plan (JPG 456kb)
The Valley - Holme Wood Natural Play
2 March 2009
As a result of the past unsuccessful improvements to The Valley in Holme Wood, a new scheme of improvements has been designed in a novel and innovative way. Instead of providing a traditional, fenced off manufactured play area in a selected part of the park, the new scheme does not remove existing landscape features but transforms them into more useable play features spread throughout the area. The number of manufactured play items is limited to a tyre swing, cableway and embankment slide. All other play features are made of natural materials as big boulders, logs, soil, sand, gravel and existing and new vegetation.
Consultation was carried out for several months and Leisure Services prepared a first stage of proposals based on expatiations and wishes of local people. Those were presented to local children with the addition of their new ideas and comments and a final scheme developed.
Phase 1 includes new bound gravel path work through the valley to bring more people in the park and to join the bus stop with existing path work. The cableway and a new tyre swing with sand beneath will be installed and missing seats will be replaced. Installation of big logs and big boulders for climb will take place and a shallow ditch will be created to solve drainage problems. A timber board walk will create of an off road circuit for bikers/runners.
Phase 2 involves installation of stepping stones and logs, creation of BMX biker's area, opening up Shay Lane with addition of bound gravel path and also improving the bus stop waiting area by installation of a fallen tree/big logs, several boulders and new benches. A bound gravel shortcut from bus stop towards Stirling Crescent will create a quicker route for locals.
Works will commence on the 9th March 2009 and will take approximately 8 weeks. The scheme will cost in the region of £90,000.
Granby Lane Recreation Ground
16 February 2009
A full refurbishment of a play area facility on Granby Lane Recreation ground which is expected to start on the 16th March 2009. Local school children at St Mary's C of E Primary School in Riddlesden have been involved in the design of the play area which will include an adventure trail, play hut climbing frame, swings, Ariel slide, dish roundabout and will include safer surfacing to naturalise into surroundings. It will also have a raging bull and animal sculptures, five-a-side goal posts along with elements of natural play including megaphones on a grass mounds, picnic area, seating and bins. Works will also include renewal of fencing to boundary of local allotments.
Funding for the project has been provided by Riddlesden & East Morton Urban Village, Area Initiative Fund, Wren landfill tax Community Fund and section 106 planning gains. An official opening will be arranged with the local school children later in the year and will include bulb/tree planting in which we hope the local schoolchildren will be involved with.
Granby Lane Recreation Ground Proposal (PDF 256kb)
Peel Park Winter Sale
February 2009
Peel Park will be holding their sale of winter bedding plants and surplus shrubs on Saturday 28th February. The sale is on from 9am - 3pm. This is usually a very popular event so get in early to get the best stock.
Restoring Roberts Park to its former glory
February 2009
On the 2nd February 2009 work will get underway on a 14 month scheme to restore Roberts Park in Saltaire to its former glory. Costing £4.5 million the scheme will restore the buildings and footpaths on the site as well as introducing new planting to the park and opening up the park to the river. There will be a new play area created on the site and the skate park will undergo a considerable refurbishment. All the information about the restoration will shortly be displayed on the Roberts Park page of this site.
Contractors Caseys will be setting up their compound on the existing skatepark at the beginning of February.
Multi Use games area
January 2009
Leisure Services are pleased to announce that work has started to provide a new Multi Use games area at Russell Hall Park in Queensbury. The project costing £60,000 has been jointly funded by local Section 106 contributions and Queensbury Urban Village. The works should be completed by the end of March 2009.
Lister Park Lions
January 2009
The Friends of Lister Park are to host an event to celebrate the return of the Lions to Lister Park. Following a grant of £25,000 from WREN Landfill Tax Credits the group in conjunction with Leisure Services has arranged for 2 new lion statues replacing those originally in the park to be placed ear the children's play area.
The event to celebrate the return of the lions will be on March 29th 2009.
BIGK Support
January 2009
Bradford Council's Parks Service are once again pleased to offer their support to the BIGK 10K this March. Organisers of the BIGK run hope the 2009 event will exceed the field of over 300 starters who completed the challenge at the inaugural 2008 event, which also raised over £10,000 for Sue Ryder Care at Manorlands by following a unique multi-terrain route linking all four major parks in Keighley. For those wishing to train up for the BIG event, don’t forget the Keighley & Craven AC “Begin Running” sessions for ladies of all ages and standards at 6.30pm on Thursdays from Greenhead Athletics Centre (www.kcac.co.uk, contact Wendy Holder on 07779 696511 or Richard Taylor on 07982 730196). There are also plenty of other sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings for potential participants of all standards and new members are always very welcome.
For more details about the 2009 BIGK 10K contact Andrew Wood on 07786 273718 or John Dennis on 07919 477861.
