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Monday, July 25, 2016

Flowers Everywhere

Cheshire East Council scoops Green Flags award

Cheshire East Council’s parks are some of the very best in the UK – and that’s official.

Cheshire East has been awarded Green Flags for its outstanding parks.

The Green Flag award is given to authorities that deliver a parks service to an international standard. All parks are measured on how well they are maintained, how sustainable they are along with their contributions to conservation and heritage.

However, there are also more diverse criteria that parks are measured on, which include areas such as how they are marketed and managed.

Significant investment in Queens Park, Crewe means that it now joins Congleton and Sandbach parks along with the Moor in Knutsford, Bollington recreation ground, Brereton Heath local nature reserve, Tegg’s Nose country park and Tatton Park as having been awarded the Green Flag standard.

Tatton Park has also received the Green Heritage Award, which is given to places that achieve a high standard in management and interpretation of a site with local or national historic importance.

The awards were recognition of outstanding partnership working both with other local authorities and community groups. They were given out at Sheffield Town Hall in an event attended by many northern authorities.

Councillor David Brown, Deputy Leader of Cheshire East Council, said: “This is deserved recognition for a lot of hard work and dedication, not just from our own teams at Cheshire East but also the army of volunteers and community groups that make achievements like this possible.”

“The Green Flag is an international standard and the only national award for parks, so this is great praise for Cheshire East to be recognised in this way.”

Councillor John Hammond, Chairman of Ansa – who deliver parks services for Cheshire East – said: “Green Flag is a prestigious parks award which benchmarks the national standard for parks and green spaces in the UK. So I am delighted with this success.

“All of these parks look beautiful at this time and I must thank all our friends groups and partners for their outstanding efforts and contributions to make this happen. 

“It was particularly satisfying that Queens Park in Crewe, was successful in obtaining the award this year, following the recent refurbishment and investment. We do hope you will take time to visit and support your local park!”

 

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Its all about flowers this week as the summer bedding starts to develop but along with that the vandals are about and the Gulf War memorial a lot of the flowers have been pulled up

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The Boer War memorial has a nice display and first time this year the banks on the south side have a wildlife garden which is brining in bees and butterfly's not at its best yet but it has been well received by visitors

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The main drive flowers are doing well and the wildlife is still producing young as the mallard looks after her new brood

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Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Badgers having more problems

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A lot of new duck this week a bit late but some out with mum this week

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After problems with the illegal disturbing of badgers we were assured by the Chief Exec that they would be looked after as required by law

I quote from the letter from Peter Bates 17th June 2016:
“The latest incident you describe with the mowing was a result of the badger sett expanding into the open grassland and not being spotted by our staff.”
We are disappointed that this has happened again since we hoped that staff would now be
well informed and subsequently give the sett a wide birth with the mower.

But this week they went over setts with a mower this is not only a problem for badgers but it show CEC has no concept of safety of its staff if a mower drop down a hole and its ride on then the operator can be thrown off and with blades spinning be seriously hurt. There seems to be no communication from the top to staff on the ground 

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The bank on the south side is now starting to flower with the wildlife garden that was own

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Graffiti Gone

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The young rabbits are about in the park they are all over the park

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The gardeners have planted out the Gulf War memorial a bed that isnt normally done a lot of people are calling for this memorial to be moved to Burma Island so all the fallen can be remembered in on place as the Gulf War is out of site and a lot of people dont know its there and its in living memory

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At the bottom of the lake near the gold coarse were they have put the sandstone the Lions are going to plant it up for their anniversary it would be nice all in heathers giving all year round colour

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There has been a lot of graffiti in the park and this week a firm has been in cleaning from all  over the park how long it stays clean is another matter