The Parks Trust Digital Annual Public Meeting 2020
This year, we are holding our annual public meeting in a slightly different format due to covid-19.
We usually present our Annual Report at a public meeting in July at which anyone can attend and hear about our work and ask us questions. So that we can still share this with you, this year, in place of our usual event we've produced this video of our Chairman and Chief Executive providing an overview of 2019/20.
We are always pleased to take questions and as we can’t take them in person we would like it if you could send them in to us via email info@theparkstrust.com or via our Facebook or Twitter channels by Thursday 23 July. We will answer your questions in another video which we'll post on our social channels in the next week or so.
A copy of our 2019/ 2020 annual report is available to download from this page, but please also see a brief overview below.
Annual Report 2019/20 overview
We started the 2019/20 financial year in pretty good financial shape and we continued to achieve good things in all areas of The Trust, as you will see in our report. However, the coronavirus pandemic that struck at the end of the year has caused us to make some serious cuts in expenditure and re-focus on managing the parks and landscapes as cost effectively as possible.
We hope for a swift recovery following the pandemic, to enable us to achieve our goals for the next few years;
- Our number one priority as always is to carry on managing the parks, lakes, woods and landscapes to a good standard. Ensuring they are clean and safe, rich in wildlife and biodiversity and with plenty of good facilities.
- We hope we will be able to get back to organising events and activities in the parks and particularly helping communities to organise their festivals and celebrations.
- We want to get back to providing outdoor learning programmes for schools, groups and our own Junior and Youth Park Rangers – all of which had to stop in March.
- We look forward to working closely with Milton Keynes Council on their green agenda and play our part in addressing climate change which is a huge threat for the world that we should not lose sight of whilst dealing with coronavirus.
- We will also continue to work closely with the Council and developers to help ensure new parks in growth areas are well designed and integrated with our existing network and we will publish our 2050 proposition setting out the green infrastructure that will need to be put in place as the city enters its next big growth phase.
- We will make our land even richer in biodiversity and look forward to working with our farming partner on the new farming strategy we have put in place and which makes biodiversity a key priority.
- We have many more park improvements we would like to undertake just as soon as the finances recover. We have already started work on a major new watersports building and café at Willen Lake which will open in early 2021 and we remain ambitious to improve facilities in Campbell Park and at Furzton Lake.
- We are going to continue to build and strengthen our programme for volunteers.
- We will work on diversity across the organisation and how we can improve representation from more varied communities in our workforce and in our volunteer programme.
