Maghull Town Council’s (MTC) Huge Investment for Our Children.
In recent weeks, MTC have finished a brilliant £107,000 upgrade of children’s playground equipment in six of our 14 parks, and in which councillors unanimously agreed to use part of the reserve funds. However, a surprise boost to these fantastic improvements has come from within the MTC’s resourceful maintenance team!
The upgrade started at Hall Lane Park and then included Mersey Avenue Park, Moss Park, Balls Wood, Moorhey Park, Lathom Park and builds on last year’s amazing upgrade of KGV’s varied and colourful playground. Please see the attached map and pictures.
The maintenance team that quietly keeps our parks looking pristine have over the last year welcomed George and John (Park Rangers) Nigel Bean (maintenance team and pictured) and their new Amenities Manager Derek Stephens (pictured) who has decades of experience in facility management. Although you would not realise it but due to sickness and departures in the team Derek really had to hit the ground running when he started in April and has been a breath of fresh air in terms of his experience, resilience and friendliness.
However, when Nigel started last year it was fascinating to hear that he had a lifetime of experience in world motorsports, having travelled the world and has a wealth of skills to enable him to build a car from scratch. Consequently, the myriad of equipment that is used to maintain all the parks has never worked so well, reducing the costs of repairing and servicing and he has shared many of his skills with the rest of the team. His latest work has involved sourcing and applying paints and materials to many of the broken or decaying structures in our parks, to the extent that you would now consider them brand-new, cheerful and inviting. We are incredibly grateful to all the MTC amenities team for their consistent high standards of work and friendliness but we would like to give an extra thank you to Nigel for all his inspiring work.
When we took the picture of Derek and Nigel at Hudson/Moorhey Park we were joined by some very young discerning customers/playground users! They were absolutely delighted with many of the parks that have been improved but their big concern was about the non-functioning zip wires at Balls Wood and KGV which Derek informed them would be back to normal in September.
After the really successful MTC organised park events which involved performances of Frozen at Glen Park and the return of the MaghullFest at KGV, now is the time to be amazed by what our inviting playground parks are beginning to offer.
Cllr Frank Sharp
