A promise not to sell or build on a park in Langley has come from authorities after funding problems led one resident to raise concerns.
Langley resident Gordon Moffatt asked Slough Borough Council to ensure Langley Memorial Recreation Ground would always be protected from housing developments. His concern was prompted by news earlier this year that the trust that runs the park is set to run out of money.
He feared that this, together with a government drive to increase housebuilding in England, could make the pressure ‘all too much’ for the council.
Mr Moffatt said: “My concern is, with the fiscal challenges and the push from central government to start building, that they will find it irresistible.
READ MORE: Salt Hill playing fields ‘out of money’ warns council
“I want to flag this up now and hold their feet to the fire and get a cast-iron undertaking that that land will never be touched.”
But a spokesperson said Slough Borough Council had ‘no intention to sell off the valuable open space that is well used by the local community’.
They added that planning laws and policy protect parks from development. Slough’s annual housebuilding targets also decreased slightly in a government review earlier this year – 800 new homes a year, down from 850.
Slough Borough Council revealed in May this year that funding for Langley Memorial Ground could run out in 10 years.
The park is run by the Langley War Memorial Field charitable trust. This is wholly owned by Slough Borough Council, but is responsible for managing its own finances.
Yet the trust’s most recent accounts show that while it has an income of £6,605 a year, it has an annual maintenance bill of £16,605. The council helps to plug the gap by paying for some of the park’s maintenance from its own environment budget.
But commissioners, appointed by the government to oversee the council after it effectively went bankrupt in 2021, have called for this subsidy to end. They say the council’s trusts, which also run Salt Hill Playing fields and Bayliss War Memorial Garden, must become self-sufficient.
The Langley War Memorial Field trust currently has a pot of reserve funding of just under £133,000. But analysis by the council says this would run out around ten years if it was used to help pay for maintenance.
Slough Borough Council is investigating ways to make the Langley and Bayliss trusts self-sufficient, such as by increasing income or asking volunteers to help maintain the parks.
Councillors on the parks’ trustee committee are set to be given an update at their next meeting on October 16.
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