"Unacceptable delay” in returning Sheffield park area to public use

The Friends of Graves Park are determined that all the land once used for Norton Nursery should be returned to parkland as it is part of a gift to the citizens of Sheffield by Alderman JG Graves.

They have been arguing with the council that the land should now be released, as has happened with two other parcels of the former plant nursery. The question was again raised at a meeting of the city council’s charity trustee sub-committee (January 22), which oversees all charitable gifts of land and buildings made to the people of Sheffield.

Caroline Dewar, who is chair of the Friends group, asked a series of questions at the meeting about the “unacceptable delay in restoring the land back to parkland”.

She said that in 1998 the land was declared derelict and surplus to requirements by the council and that attempts were made to sell it for housing development.She asked if the committee knew that “this was eventually prevented by strong local opposition, eventually supported by the Charity Commission and that there was an apology at the time from the council and an assurance that the land would be restored back to parkland?”

Hospice

The first section, Chantreyland Meadow, was restored by the Friends and opened in 2006, said Ms Dewar. A second section, called the Arboretum or Secret Garden, reopened to the public in 2016, again following restoration work by the group.

She said the council again tried to dispose of part of the site in 2008 to St Luke’s Hospice but this failed, partly because of a Charity Commission intervention and partly because th charity could not financially make the move.

Ms Dewar said council responses to the group’s recent Freedom of Information requests “make it clear that the Norton Nurseries site ‘is not and has never been designated ‘depot land’,’ yet despite this, the site is being used as a depot for Graves Park and other local areas”.

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She said that this includes storing rubbish taken from a long list of city parks so that larger loads can be made up and save excess journeys to a waste collection site in Darnall.

The group is worried that restoration of the land will have to wait until the council conducts a review of its depots and buildings that could take five years to complete.

She added that “25 years is far too long for the local community to wait for Sheffield City Council to honour its promise to allow the Friends of Graves Park, at their own expense, to restore this section of the park back to parkland”.

Urgency

She asked: “Finally, are the trustees aware that the next section to be restored is not currently occupied or being used for anything and that the above activities, as well as the storage of vehicles and fuel, are all within the part of the Nurseries on the other side of the glasshouses and that the commencement of restoration would not impact on the use of the Nurseries as a depot?”Ms Dewar urged the sub-committee as a matter of urgency to agree to the land being released to the Friends of Graves Park “so that it can be restored back to parkland and reopened to public use with immediate effect”.

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Committee chair Coun Ian Auckland read out a lengthy written answer to the questions, confirming that the land cannot be released until the review has taken place.

He said that he agreed the site is charitable land and offered to meet the group to discuss the issues.

Coun Auckland, who represents Graves Park ward on the council, said: “I cannot think there is any appetite to dispose of that land for housing, to another charity or to find another use for it beyond charitable land.

“We’re all on board in keeping it in the charity as parkland.”