Council set to scale back car park improvements at popular country park after failing to secure funding

Work on a new 131-space car park at Burrs Country Park in Bury is to be scaled back after the council failed to secure funding. Last year Bury Council, in response to a huge increase in visitors to the park and related issues with parking, agreed plans to formalise the current overspill car park to create new off-road car parking spaces and a surfaced pavement along Woodhill Road giving pedestrian access into the park.

The approved plans said the parking bays would be surfaced with a permeable plastic geo-grid system as cars had become stuck on the field in wet weather. Bury Council said in its original planning application that this proved the current overspill facility was not fit for purpose.

However, this week a revision to scale back the agreed plans has been submitted to Bury Council. The revised proposal, states: “To reduce the extent of the geogrid parking bay surface and replace with fibrous sand (as is currently on site). “There would still be a through road and entrance and exit improvements as per the original proposals.

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“The land to the north would not be upgraded and would remain as it is at present, a grassed open space available for parking for one off events.” The planning amendment also explains that ‘budgetary reasons’ are behind the need to scale back the project. The application, states: “The initial proposals were dependent on Bury Council and partners securing a significant amount of funding which hasn’t happened.

The approach road is often inudated with parked cars

“So the aim is to upgrade the car park within the budget available.” A planning officers’ report on the original plans, published by Bury Council last year, said: “The field has been used as an overspill car park for the park for a number of years.

“Due to the increase in visitors to the park and its growing popularity as a tourist destination, and more so recently due to the pandemic which has seen an increase in number of people using the park and outside space, the park requires additional and more permanent parking provision. “The proposal is to therefore formalise the existing grass overspill car park in order to cater for the increase in visitor numbers and thereby reduce the number of cars which use the access road and bits and pieces of land around the site to park.”