Plans for a new play park in Godshill have been reignited thanks to a significant but anonymous donation, with work on the state-of-the-art playground set to get underway soon, Island Echo understands. Despite successfully getting planning permission from the Isle of Wight Council in June 2021, the project has not been able to progress due to the loss of funding back in September 2022, but now plans are moving in the right direction once again. The site at Central Mead, off High Street, currently has no play equipment and instead just hosts the local cricket pitch. There is, however, a play area off May Close near the Godshill Scout Hut, although the equipment there is rather rudimentary. Island Echo understands that an angel investor – who wishes to remain anonymous – has donated more than £200,000 to the Godshill Play Park Project and that work is due to get underway shortly – due to the existing planning permission expiring in June. The donors have said:
“We were so excited to read about the playpark project and simultaneously devastated when we heard that it had lost funding, we really wanted to be able to help and to see this much valuable resource built for the village and wider community”.
It is believed that the new play park will be smaller in size than originally planned, but will still boast a wheelchair-accessible roundabout, climbing frame, zip line, obstacle course and sensory area. Previous plans would have also seen the current tired pavilion building demolished and a new community centre, with a hall, kitchen area and changing rooms built instead. It is unclear as to where these plans currently sit. Nikki Collinson-Phenix, who has led the project, says:
“A project of this size and scope is not cheap, especially since Covid. We have a few island businesses who kindly sponsored small pieces of equipment and those earlier fundraisers and donations certainly helped get us the much-needed planning permission. But this incredible anonymous donation secures the rest of the whole revised project and I am honestly speechless at the generosity of our donors. There were certainly a good few tears of joy when I heard the news! “To say we are so grateful is an understatement and just doesn’t come close to what this means to us. It may have taken 8.5 years from that first conversation and the launch of the project, but finally that play park is going to be built and I could not be more grateful to everyone who has supported this project, but of course especially to these unbelievable donors. “Your kindness blows my mind!”
Is this the field with the Japanese Knotweed warnings around it?
What fantastic news! And inclusive. Is this an Island first?
What a generous and lovely thing to do
It certainly restores faith, doesn’t it?