Crawley Question Time 2022: Friends of Goffs Park ask ‘The kiosk is the heart of Goffs Park, and the park needs it back!’

Crawley Question Time was hosted at Crawley College yesterday (March 10) and included a panel of guests from the key sectors that form the town.

The panel featured Councillor Peter Lamb, Councillor Duncan Crow, Councillor Michael Jones, Chief Inspector Shane Baker, Deputy Youth Mayor Shelly Sharma, Dr Pennie Ford and Dr Laura Hill.

According to regular users of Goffs Park, the area has been in decline since the pandemic caused the closure of the park’s kiosk, which provided a meeting place for the local community and offered a deterrent to crime.

Friends of Goffs Park applauded the success of Crawley Pride 2021 that was hosted in Goffs Park, but wants to achieve the same number of visitors that Tilgate Park has experienced since it’s renaissance.

To do this, the group wants more funding from Crawley Borough Council to help provide a kiosk with reasonably priced food and to reopen the toilet facilities.

Janet Roskilly, member of Friends of Goffs Park, asked: “The kiosk has been the heart of Goffs Park for many years, and the park needs it back serving reasonably priced food. We want to know when is it going to reopen?”

Cllr Peter Lamb, replied: “ I can address the kiosk and public toilets at the same time. There was a plan, a rough plan on what we were going to do and Covid got in the way of it.

“If we take Tilgate Park; a bitter rival, 10 years ago my predecessor started to look at the park to see if it was able to cover its own costs. What has happened is a renaissance of Tilgate Park. A lot of council upfront money has been put in and now the park is creating revenue to cover its own costs.

“With the activities that are happening there. It’s quite clearly overheating and we see this with the level of visitor parking in residential areas surrounding the park.

“Conversations have been happening and we need to create another leading park in the town to deal with the level of demand for those facilities.

“The issues with the toilets is that we put them in, but there is a level of cost attached to them. We’ve had some fantastic events run in the last year at Goffs Park. The car parking space is currently not viable, and if we are going to make it a big venue we need a lot more space for that.

“There is work going on to create a master plan, which the Friends of Goffs park need to be involved in. We need them to help shape the future of the park. The problem is that we want to get back on course with this but we’ve been massively derailed by Covid.

Free events at the park were cancelled because of Covid. This hit the site hard and Friends of Goffs Park are hoping to continue to host more events for the town in the future.

Cllr Michael Jones, replied: “I’m very sympathetic to the points raised about Goffs Park. I think Goffs Park is a jewel, even the jewel in Crawley’s crown. I’m personally committed and would like to see a renaissance of Goffs Park.

“I would like to see significant investment in the park. It’s got some great facilities already such as the park and the railway. It's a great location, convenient for transport, so it has everything going for it.

“The Council has done good work at Tilgate Park, Worth Park Gardens and it’s my personal view that it’s Goffs Park’s turn.”

See more: Crawley LGBTQU+ launch Pride festival 2022: Here’s how you can get involved, Top 12 places to go for a walk in Crawley

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