The Friends of Rowntree Park hosted a Public Consultation on Thursday 28th of September 2023 regarding our plans to create a community space in the former park keepers lodge above the York Explore cafe. The consultation was held in advance of submitting a planning application – which we aim to submit in Autumn 2023.
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The Public Consultation
The Exhibition that ran 11-7pm on Thursday 28th of September was very well attended with 150 people attending during the day and 55 attendees at the meeting 7-8.30pm.
Those attending included York MP Rachael Maskell, Pete Kilbane (Deputy Leader of City of York Council), Katie Lomas (Councillor responsible for overseeing the project’s potential lease to the FRP) and Johnny Crawshaw (Chair of Planning Committee). There were two senior officers from CYC who again have responsibility for the Lodge building at present and the officer responsible for disability access. The CEO of Explore ( York’s Library Service) who run the Rowntree Park Reading Cafe attended along with Trustees and staff members from Explore.
There was a great deal of positivity with constructive comments from lots of local people. The plan is to apply for planning approval towards the end of October.
If planning approval is permitted later in the year then a full application will be made to the Community Ownership Fund (COF) for the maximum grant of £300,000 to pay for the development and towards revenue costs. The application was approved at stage 1 in March 2023 but the full application will be made in January 2024 with an estimated timeline for construction of 1 year to hopefully open in Spring 2025.
Johnny Hayes who is the Lodge project manager announced during the meeting that. ” We applied for an addition “enabling grant” to the COF in August for an additional £10,000 to pay for the cost of going to planning with our development. We heard just hours before the Exhibition that the COF had awarded FRP with the maximum £10,000. This bodes very well for our application and was excellent news to bring to this meeting.”
Click here to see information from the display boards that were at the exhibition – including proposed architects plans.
This page will be updated in due course. Many thanks for your continued support for this project. You can read our previous blog setting out why we are doing the project and what it will achieve here.
We are also working with some members of Clements Hall Local History Group who are in the process of producing a new History of Rowntree Park. This will be launched prior to the Lodge opening in winter 2025.
