A petition calling for the council to scrap development plans for Hillsborough Park has reached nearly one thousand signatures, ahead of tomorrow’s decision.
Sheffield City Council will decide tomorrow whether to confirm proposed changes to the park. This includes building a new activity hub with a café, new tennis courts and a new paddle tennis court, but will drastically reduce the size of the “multi-use games area” (MUGA).
The MUGA is a large area of flat concrete ground inside the park, which provides a freely accessible, floodlit area for activities, games and exercise.
Andy Chaplin, Friends of Hillsborough Park’s treasurer, said the petition shows the level of local support for having a bigger MUGA that is free to use.
He said: “It’s always been fairly well used for casual play for kids who come out after school or at weekends or during school holidays. The proposal is going to make a much smaller MUGA, and it may or may not be available all the time.”
Discussions over the project have been taking place since 2020, with income from the council’s proposed ‘hub’ expected to help fund tennis projects across Sheffield.
Christine Gilligan Kubo, Hillsborough ward councillor, said: “Lawn Tennis Association want to promote tennis in the area across Sheffield. They were looking for a hub that could be the centre piece, so that they could go out and do outreach activities – and Hillsborough Park was identified.”
Cllr Kubo explained that the Lawn Tennis Association will support the chosen development operator with a twenty-five-year maintenance arrangement.
Mr Chaplin says he has no problem with tennis across the city looking to find new funding, but doesn’t want the size of the MUGA to shrink.
He said: “We believe they’ve picked the wrong location, because actually what they’re doing is building on something which is currently well used by people that were there already.”
One of the main users of the space is Sheffield Cycling 4 All (SC4A), who offer inclusive cycling sessions for those with disabilities and long term health conditions.
SC4A have been using the site for 15 years, and whilst they are supportive of the Council, do not want the size of the MUGA to be reduced.
Project coordinator Rosemary Hill said: “The site that we need to operate is about a third of the MUGA size. So we would need to have sole use of the MUGA and then that would affect all the other casual users.”
“The main reason we are not supporting the development is that we think there’s going to be some conflict between our cyclists and the existing park users.
“It’s a disadvantage to our cyclists because it’s sort of moving us away from a safe visible open area.”
Cllr Kubo said she hopes the decision made at tomorrows Charity Trustee Sub Committee meeting will protect the services provided by SC4A.
She said: “I’m hoping there will be an agreement that they can use this space because we desperately do not want it to affect the provision that cycling for all provides for their service users. It’s really important we keep that.”
