Daventry Country Park’s bid for a ninth Green Flag award has been unsuccessful.
The national accolade is a benchmark for continuous excellence awarded to parks and green spaces by The Civic Trust and CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) since 1996. This year only five open spaces in Northamptonshire achieved the award, reflecting the increasingly hard criteria set by the organisers.
Green Flag judges visited the Daventry Country Park in June this year. In their feedback to Daventry District Council, they were impressed with several aspects of the park and also made a number of recommendations to enhance the experience for visitors.
Strengths include friendly rangers, a supportive Friends of the Country Park group, well-maintained play equipment and toilets, good access to far entrances via a clean subway, a positive approach to dog fouling and having measures in place to tackle other potential issues such as burnt-out cars. The country park was also judged to support a wide variety of wildlife and habitats and have a very positive approach to environmental sustainability with the wind turbine.
Recommendations include improving park maintenance and facilities, creating wildlife corridors and removing redundant tree stakes, better entrance signage and maintenance of entrance area to improve first impressions for visitors. Judges also noted broken fencing and picnic bench at the time of their visit.
Judy Gregory, Executive Director at Daventry District Council, said: “Whilst it’s disappointing that Daventry Country Park has not achieved a ninth Green Flag, it remains one of the district’s most popular beauty spots, attracting over 400,000 visitors a year.
“Our previous eight consecutive Green Flag awards show the hard work that the countryside rangers put in to making it an enjoyable place to visit for all ages. It’s a fantastic asset to Daventry District and well-supported by the local community.
“However every year the criteria for achieving the Green Flag are more challenging and we have to look at ways of enhancing the park further for visitors. We will look at all areas of the judges’ recommendations and strive towards achieving our ninth Green Flag award next year.”
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