I would like to comment on your article “Row over park funding” (The Voice, August 22). It’s about Sparc versus the parish council.
Charlotte Hellen does well by asking people to contribute money for the play area and she should carry on collecting money from individuals who are willing to pay it.
The article says that Glen Park has “over 40,000 users a year”, so surely if she asks each of them for £1 she’ll be laughing. (Don’t tell me that “over 40,000” wasn’t quite true.)
One of the jobs of Surfleet Parish Council is not to use public money to prop up an ill-thought-out, way-over-the-top project which seems to me to owe nothing to the needs of Surfleet and a great deal to the desire of one parish councillor of a quarter of a century ago to trounce the other parish councillors of that time and say, in effect, – and these are my slangy words, not his – “Poo to you, boys, I can get a field and my field is ever so much bigger than yours.” That’s what it was about – ego.
The councillor had worked for Leicester City Council before he retired to Surfleet. Glen Park is suitable for Leicester, not for a middle sized village like Surfleet. It is not fair for Surfleet parishioners to be expected to foot the bill for his big ideas, if the project is foundering financially, and especially if no accounts are produced.
If 40,000 people use this Glen Park, and that’s what the spokesman clearly said, then they obviously come from the whole area of South Holland, so the spokesman should ask SHDC and all the parish councils in South Holland for contributions, instead of whine, whine, whining only to Surfleet Parish Council.
I am not anyone’s “creature”. No-one has asked me to write this.
Frances Richardson
Surfleet
