Work finally set to start on new skate park for Buckingham in May council says

Work to build Buckingham’s new skate park is finally expected to start this May, Buckinghamshire Council has confirmed.

Following a residents’ petition led by town councillor Jon Harvey, Bucks Council agreed in 2020 to install a £200,000 new skate park in Buckingham, using Section 106 (S106) money which it had already received from developers, .

The initial plan was for installation to begin in spring 2021. This was subsequently postponed until after the summer holidays in 2021 - but nothing happened.

In July 2022, Cllr Robin Stuchbury told a meeting of Bucks Council that young people were feeling ‘fobbed off’ by the delay.

Cllr Stuchbury said: “We had a wonderful skate park event in Buckingham at the weekend, as part of the Fringe, which I am so happy to be chairman of.

"But on the sad side of it, at the end of the event we were reminded by the young people that we had made statements to the effect that we were going to replace that.

"No matter how hard I worked to try and convince them that these were circumstances which were beyond my control, when you talk to young people, they don’t get that.

"They just think that you’re fobbing them off and you haven’t got a real reason.”

Following renewed speculation on social media this spring over whether the skate park was ever going to materialise, Bucks Council has now confirmed it expects work to start in May. And it blamed the Environment Agency for the delays.

Cabinet member for culture and leisure, Clive Harriss, told the Bucks Herald: “The skatepark in Buckingham will be built in the same location as the current one and doesn’t require planning permission but does require Environment Agency’s (EA) consent.

“We are working closely with the contractor, Canvas Spaces Limited, who have secured the required EA consent. This consent requires that works start before March 31 2023, but the contractors wish to extend this start date to May 2023, due to other work commitments and preferable weather conditions.

"We are expecting to hear back from Canvas Spaces Limited shortly, to confirm if they have been able to secure an extension, and what the timeline for the new skatepark will look like.

“We are fully committed to this project and embarrassed by the delay made by the EA, as this isn’t the only instance where projects have been delayed because of their investigations.

"Our local councillors such as Warren Whyte and Caroline Cornell have been pushing for this project to be completed on behalf of local residents, and we all hope to see the works commencing soon.”

Once contractors are on site, the £200,000 skate park, which is being constructed in the same location as the existing park, is expected to take around 12 weeks to build – depending on weather conditions.

The new skate park has been designed to offer a range of obstacles appealing to users of different disciplines and levels of experience, such as rolled lips and mellow transitions for beginners, coping lips, small hips, transfers and pump areas for intermediates, and hips and transfers for advanced users.