Town Park in Lottery funding boost

The plans to revitalise Harlow Town Park have moved one step closer to securing lottery funding.

Harlow Council has this week secured the initial backing of both the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) for their scheme to revitalise the Town Park.

We have bid for £1.6m funding to help us in the publicly backed plan to restore Spurriers House, redevelop the Water Gardens and the Bandstand and other landscaped areas. The bid also would provide new education facilities and improve Pets’ Corner.

Whilst we have not yet got that funding we have been told that we have made it to the next round of the the HLF and BLF Parks for People programme.

For making that next round the Council has received £104,000 development funding.
This funding should enable us to work up more detailed plans before a final funding application in March 2011.

In Harlow we all love the Town Park but some areas are in serious need of revitalizing. It has been quite a long time since much money was spent on the park. I remember from my childhood years that the area near Spurriers and the Bandstand was always a hive of activity, and that's the kind of environment that we would like to recreate.

It's really good to get this far and know that there is a chance of securing the funding for some of the work. Of course the battle doesn't stop here, we still have a lengthy bidding application process to go through, and we would need to find match funding to complete the bid... Perhaps I need to go and nose around the various European pots of money floating around at the moment and see if there are any for urban parks....