Volunteers of Graves Park charity are desperate to restore public parkland as depot site Olive Grove is now a promising location to move large council vehicles.
The Friends of Graves Park charity objected the council’s request last May for a year long temporary licence to use Norton Nurseries, an area of Graves Park, as an operational base for their Parks and Countryside department.
Machinery and three tractors currently sit on the land and are used by the council for park maintenance across Sheffield.
Councillor Ruth Bell, head of Parks and Countryside, said: “It does feel like we’re making progress on the potential to move the largest vehicles from Norton Nurseries. The most positive conversations that we’ve had have been around Olive Grove.”
“The only slight stumbling block is that they are currently having some construction works at the place that would be great for those vehicles.”
At a council meeting on 3rd March, Kurtis Crossland, Chair of the Communities, Parks and Leisure Policy, said: “While we are sat in the town hall, the entirety of Graves Park does belong to the people of Sheffield, not the council, it is a charitable park and the purpose of that is that is that regardless of politics or any short term pressures in local government.”
“Graves Park stands untouched because it is about how the park is for the next 100 years not necessarily the next 5 years.”
The council is also looking at sites like Norton Aerodrome for the rest of the park equipment.
Caroline Dewar, chair of Friends of Graves Park Charity, says: “The Friends have been asking for many years to restore the next section of the nurseries to parkland, so that it can be reopened to the public.”
“The bit the Friends of Graves Park want is virtually unused, so they could move the stuff they have on there to elsewhere on the site and let us get started, while they continue to run their depot until such time as they find a replacement site.”
“The Friends feel that Sheffield City Council parks are looking for any excuses to hang on to the land and not release it for restoration.”
Councillor Crossland said: “It’s as much about restoring trust as it is about restoring parkland. For decades the friends group haven’t always been treated the best by Sheffield city council and we’ve seen with Rose Garden Café what good communication can do to fix relations.”
“We still need to make sure it doesn’t fall off our radar just because the immediate pressure dissipates in the next few months, we still need to restore as much of this parkland as possible.”
The Friends of Graves Park also have issues with the waste disposal at the site and say ‘the collection of waste and handling of waste on the site is wholly inappropriate’.
The Friends of Graves Park charity get an annual fee of £60,000 compensation for the council for their use of the site.
The council has said that gardening teams in the South of Sheffield have operated from Norton Nurseries since the site was a planting and growing nursery.
Cllr Bell commented that whilst the area that the Friends want to bring back to parkland is not a problem, it exposes a building that is problematic and would need work done to bring the site back to public safety.
Cllr Bell said: “We continue to look a whether or not any appropriate sites come on the market that we might lease or hire as an alternative to Norton Nurseries. There haven’t been any since the last committee date.”
She hopes by their next meeting in June they have a concrete proposal for the large vehicles to be moved out of Norton Nurseries.