Dudley Council has been told it treats parks friends groups like a lower class and does not value volunteers.
The damning verdict was delivered by representatives from friends groups at a meeting of the council’s Communities and Growth Scrutiny Committee on October 13.
Committee members were given a presentation by officers from the authority’s Parks Development Team which told councillors it manages 38 formal parks and 28 allotment associations over an area of 900 hectares.
Julia Marks, chair of the Friends of Wollescote Park in Stourbridge, said: “Our friends group has been here quite a long time and it seems the level of support has significantly deteriorated.
“The team seems underfunded and it always feels like they need more staff.”
Christine Bate from Gornal’s Friends of Abbey Street Park, added: “Our group feels like there are not enough people to help us, we do a lot of work and if we are not careful we feel we will be forgotten.”
Steve Hill from Bernard Oakley Memorial Gardens in Halesowen told councillors he felt help from the authority was ‘spasmodic at best’ and he had been told the council did not have time to do work at the site.
Julia Marks drew a comparison with a famous comedy sketch featuring John Cleese and Ronnie Corbett where the council was upper class and friends groups are lower class and should ‘know their place’.
She added: “We have to work really hard to do basic things, we get funding and when we do the council turns up; you need to change your attitude.”
June McAuliffe, from Friends of Saltwells Nature Reserve, told the meeting they had calculated volunteer hours to be worth at least £22,000 per year in cash terms and added: “Maybe we should be taken a little more seriously, we all feel undervalued.”
Councillors were visibly shocked by the comments, Cllr Parmjit Sahota said he was ‘mortified’ by what he had heard.
Dudley’s cabinet member for neighbourhoods, Cllr Damian Corfield, said: “You are valued by this cabinet member and by Dudley Council as a whole.
“We all know the financial situation not only Dudley is feeling but many councils.
“It is upsetting to me to hear you guys don’t feel valued, I don’t want the financial element to influence that too much, you have my support 110 percent.”
Julia Marks kept up the pressure, describing what she read in a financial report for Mary Stevens Trust, which is administered by the council. She said: “In the financial report on Wollescote Park was the value of volunteer hours and the figure it repeatedly said was zero.
“The number of volunteer hours we calculated was in excess of 5,000, to be described as contributing zero was like a smack in the teeth.”
The council has been under strict spending controls during the current financial year with cuts in staff bringing savings in a number of departments.
Cllr Corfield said: “Tough decisions had to be made, from those tough decisions we have now secured the council’s funding not for 12 months but five years.
“As the council’s finances continue to recover we can apply for extra staff, it is down to officers to fill in those applications.”
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