LONG-AWAITED improvements to Kingswood Park are a step closer after South Gloucestershire Council submitted a £3.36 million funding bid to the National Heritage Lottery Fund.
The project aims to restore and enhance the park as the green heart of Kingswood.
The council has worked with the volunteer group Friends of Kingswood Park and the wider community to understand what matters to local people and reflect this in the proposals, with a decision on funding expected towards the end of the year.
If the Lottery bid is successful, money will be used to install accessible toilets and improve pathways, redesign the play area with better equipment, and introduce a mobile refreshment facility.
Running alongside the improvement works will be a three-year programme of community events and activities with a focus on health and wellbeing.
There will also be more wildlife-friendly tree planting and the creation of a wildflower meadow to boost biodiversity. Historic features such as the railings and walls will be upgraded and the central amphitheatre restored as a performance space.
Once the improvement works are carried out, a three-year programme of community events with a focus on health and wellbeing is planned.
The park restoration is part of the wider £25 million Kingswood Masterplan, a regeneration vision for the town centre, making Kingswood a better place to live, work and visit.
South Gloucestershire Council and The Friends of Kingswood Park successfully secured £120,000 in funding from The National Lottery Heritage Funding in October 2021 to develop these proposals.
Cabinet member for communities ward member for Kingswood, Cllr Leigh Ingham, said: “Kingswood Park is already a wonderful green space at the heart of the community and these plans, drawn up with the Friends group, aim to make it somewhere even more special, where local people can enjoy for years to come.”
Access will be improved, implementing the Kingswood Park Access Plan 2021, by building a ‘missing link’ footpath to create a full park path circuit.