Too late to change new estate’s ‘simplistic’ skate park plan, say planners

A Telford parish council’s polite request to change the design of a skatepark on a new housing development has been rejected by planners.

The play area at the centre of the 455-home first phase of the giant Priorslee development between Castle Farm Way and A5 has been generally welcomed by St George’s and Priorslee Parish Council.

But the parish council took the opportunity of a request by developer Miller Homes to change the layout of a Neighbourhood Equipped Area for Play (NEAP) to request that a new look is taken for a planned skate park.

“The parish council really likes the design and layout of the playground,” the parish council told planners at Telford & Wrekin Council.

But the parish claimed the “design for the skatepark is poor considering the target audience / age of the target NEAP users”

It adds that a skatepark in Teece Drive attracts a “huge amount of users”.

“Children and teenagers travel from as far as Shrewsbury and Market Drayton to access this skate park, and although they play well together it is a victim of its own success as you can only have a couple of riders on the park at any one time and there are always huge crowds,” the parish submission read.

“We feel that the simple ramp, hump and grind bar design proposed does not have enough character or challenges for users, as it is clear that children in the local area really enjoy skateboarding.”

The parish adds that there is already another similarly designed skate park in the local area with ramp-hump-ramp-and-grind bar but this is “never used”.

“We would like to see a more comprehensive design featuring a bowl or halfpipe for the skate park,” wrote the council, adding: “please.”

Telford & Wrekin Council planners, who have approved changes to access to the NEAP, said the borough’s own technical consultees had no objections to the amendments. But they took the suggestion to the developer’s play area designer to see what they made of it.

“The developer’s play area designer have reviewed the comments and the ability to include these within the design on the skatepark however, unfortunately, to include a bowl as requested would require a complete re-design of the Multi Use Games Area (MUGA) which could compromise other areas of the design,” the planners wrote.

“The skate park design has already been approved and is a material consideration in the determination of this application,” wrote planners. “As such, the local planning authority would not have grounds to refuse the proposal.”