Your priorities: parks and leisure
Residents were clear in our budget consultation that leisure and parks are some of the most highly valued services. They want activities to help them stay healthy and they want green, safe parks at the heart of their neighbourhoods with events and things to do.
Sports and leisure
Sport and leisure services will make up to £100,000 of energy efficiency savings in the next three years thanks to measures such as new combined heat and power schemes at leisure sites including Manchester Aquatics Centre, North City and Wythenshawe Forum. We'll further reduce our carbon footprint with solar panels.
We’ve just invested £27m to build three new leisure centres – East Manchester, Hough End and Arcadia Library and Leisure Centre and we’ll be spending £24m to fully refurbish Moss Side leisure centre and completely rebuild Abraham Moss.
With the Football Association, we’re looking at creating football facilities across the city as part of their plan to transform the grassroots of the game.
Parks
Our residents and visitors have told us that parks are really important – they are the heart, lungs and soul of our thriving city.
To support our new ten-year strategy we’ll be maintaining our current budget for the day-to-day running of parks for at least the next three years, backed up with new investment to make them cleaner, greener, safer and more productive.
To boost the £12.5m we’ve earmarked to develop and improve parks, we’re looking for partners and funders to work with us raising £8m extra to kick-start our 10-year plans including:
- at Heaton Park: £9m developing the historic 18th century hall and £3.5m on the stables and the lakes in the grounds
- at Wythenshawe: a further £3m on restoring the hall on top of the £2.7m already being spent on fire restoration and other planned work and we’ll spend £2m on the courtyard, walled garden and farm
- across the whole city: £3m improving the quality of community and local parks, green spaces and allotments.
Residents and others who care about our parks will help develop an action plan for each of the city’s individual parks. We’re testing the first of these plans this summer and 50 parks will have a plan in the next two years. Based on what residents, communities and park users tell us matters most, we’ll use these plans to prioritise investment in the future.