Trusts to manage parks amid major cost-cutting at Selby council

COUNTRYSIDE groups are having to be brought on board to protect parkland and open spaces across a Yorkshire district amid savage cutbacks to public sector spending.

Selby District Council confirmed it is the latest local authority which is having to look to outside organisations to help manage parks, woods and commons.

The council has admitted it has had to recruit groups such as the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust as it battles to make multi-million pound savings. The authority is faced with having to cut £3m across all its services during a four-year period from its annual £11m revenue budget.

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But senior councillors have maintained that the move will ensure the long-term future of the authority-owned parklands.

The executive member for communities, Coun Chris Metcalfe, claimed the new structure is based in the Government’s Big Society principles as it will ensure local communities have a greater stake in the sites.

However, there is a growing cynicism over the Government’s motives behind its Big Society campaign. The Archbishop of Canterbury dismissed the concept last month as a ploy to conceal a “deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable”.

But Coun Metcalfe said: “This is a brand new approach for us, and one that really looks at the wider benefits of greater community involvement in the council’s countryside assets.”

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The new arrangements, which will go out for consultation later this year before being introduced, are due to see the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust take on a 99-year lease for Barlow Common. Hambleton Hough will be leased under similar arrangements to the Church Fenton-based Wildlife Habitat Protection Trust. Meanwhile, the council’s existing partnership with Yorkshire Water to manage the Brayton Barff woodland will continue.

The Yorkshire Post revealed last week that plans are being considered to make it easier for local-authority land and buildings in the Scarborough district to be transferred to community groups.

Scarborough Borough Council, which is having to make nearly £4.5m in savings over two years, announced it is seeking views about the new Community Asset Transfer Plan.