MONTGOMERY STREET PARK COMES ON BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS

Friends of Montgomery Street Park have won major funding to revamp facilities for local people.

The £40,000 Biffa Award will be be spent on refurbishing the hard-surface sports area. The cracked and uneven surface will be levelled and relaid with rubber this month, and marked with lines for football and basketball.

New seating, goal posts and hoops are also on the way.

The project should be finished by the start of May.

The idea for the revamp followed an online questionnaire last year which brought in 177 responses from local people. The most popular demands were for improvements to the seats (particularly from supervising parents) and sports area.

In backing the proposal, Biffa noted that funds would go directly towards:

creating a safer and more usable space for park users, in what is the most densely populated area of not just Edinburgh, but Scotland (Census 2011). The upgraded sports facilities will be free to use. The improvements will promote active living and sports engagement, directly benefiting the health and wellbeing of local residents, who – having small or no private gardens – make good use of the park.

Leith Walk Primary head teacher Jackie Reid welcomed the news as the school uses the park a lot and holds its annual Nursery Sports Day there in June.

‘Improving the facility in this way will undoubtedly enhance our school, and wider community,’ she said.

The Friends of Montgomery Street Park have been active in the area since 2008. Volunteers have brought about new entrances, access ramps, seating, planting and art installations.

In 2009 they secured WREN funding to remove the fences separating green and tarmac parts of the park, and to build new steps.

All in all, it's a really heartening story of what communities can achieve when they get organised and pull together. We salute them!