Earith Skate Park, Minutes of Meeting 1, Held on Friday 23rd May 2014
Present
Mrs Julie Seamark – Chairman Mr Daniel Berry
Mr Toby Brown Mr Sam Shook
Public
Mr Tod Brown
Mrs Dawn Brown
Mrs Mandy Pink – Parish Clerk
Apologies for Absence – Mr Robert Sherriff, Mrs Alex Dawson, Miss Claire Pollard, Mr Chris Wright
Item 1 Election of Chairman – Mrs Julie Seamark was elected as Chairman for this working group.
Item 2 Skate Park Working Group Objectives – To move forward the Parish Council’s proposal to install a permanent skate park at the recreation field in Earith. To design and create an area that will be useable by all residents to incorporate a skate park facility which can be used by skateboards, scooters and BMX bikes.
Item 3 Working Party Responsibilities – The working party will be responsible for the design and installation, via a qualified contractor, of a skate park facility at Earith. Funding will be generated by the Working Party via grant applications to achieve this.
Long term responsibility will then revert to the Parish Council who will adopt the Skate Park and be responsible for ongoing maintenance of the site which will be funded via allocated funds from the Parish precept.
Item 4 Skate Park Location – The park is to be located on the recreation field in an area leased by the Parish Council from the Earith Town Estate. A 15 year ongoing lease has been agreed and signed.
The skate park area will be to the right of the current Muga Pitch and will be approximately 26m long and 11m wide. The entire area containing play equipment is to be fenced in for security and rubbish maintenance and picnic tables and additional seating and litter bins are to be installed.
Item 5 Skate Park Design – The Chairman, Clerk, Mr Toby Brown and Mr Sam Shook visited other skate parks within the area on Saturday the 10th May to see how these parks were constructed. Skate parks in Over, Foxton and Doddington were selected and Over skate park was mainly open steel and timber construction, Foxton was concrete and Doddington was constructed from Skate Lite Pro. Concrete parks are very quiet but expensive but quotations will be requested. The steel and timber construction was not suitable and the Skate Lite Pro surfacing was preferable overall.
Various jumps and ramps were considered initially and a selection of heights and structures are to be investigated by Mr Toby Brown and Mr Sam Shook. Mr Daniel Berry highlighted that all age groups should be considered and that varying heights would mean more users could benefit from the facility.
The requirements of the working group for the proposed skate park are to be given to the Clerk so that firm quotations can be obtained.
Item 6 Skate Park Funding – The Clerk has submitted grant applications to 2 organisations and a grant of £40,000 has been obtained from the Mick George Community Fund. A further grant application to WREN for £25,000 is ongoing at present and will be put to the grant awarding panel in June. A decision will be made in July.
All third party funding for both applications will be obtained from the Parish Council.
A donation of £1000 has been received from EVA and the working party would like to thank EVA for their very generous donation. A donation has also been promised from the Earith Diamond Jubilee group.
Item 7 Items for future discussion – Design, funding and quotations
Date of next meeting – Wednesday 18th June 2014
These minutes are unadopted Clerk – Mrs Mandy Pink – 24th May 2014