On Thursday 3 October the Parish Council published their report into developing use of the Impington Recreation Ground. This publication is a due to a request by charity trustees during the September 17 Full Council debate into next steps for the pump track project. The Parish Council update and a link to the full report is available on the Parish Council Website.
The Recreation Development Group is tasked with investigating options for future use of the Impington Recreation Ground. In June 2023 it commissioned a Masterplan to be designed by surveyors Wilby and Burnett. With a brief to look at various options for the site including all weather conversion of the tennis courts, changes to the parking provision, improvements to drainage and additional floodlighting. That report was completed in November 2023. The group has since decided upon one of these options for further development.
The report presents five options developed by the consultants at Wilby and Burnett. Of these, only option 3 includes a Pump Track. However, this comes at the loss of the Multi Use Games Area (MUGA), one of four Tennis courts, the Netball court and the Bowling green. While some of this loss is attributable to an increased area for parking, no options are presented with lower parking and inclusion of a Pump Track. The Parish Council article concludes with this statement “As part of the original masterplan creation, the surveyors had included an option for a small pump track on site but it came at the cost of losing other facilities and was therefore discounted. No other options showed a feasible use of the site for a pump track at this time with the current usage and layout.”
The Recreation Development Group have selected one of these options for further work, pending a decision on the future of 12 New Road – formerly the head groundman’s home. Trustees of the Pump Track Charity understand that this is not the option which includes a pump track.
This has been the situation for some time now, and the trustees welcome the Parish Council’s decision to share this information with the community. This is why we have advocated for less ideal options away from the Recreation Ground. While the Recreation Ground scores highly on many of our location rubrics, we have come to accept that a track here is unlikely to become a reality. Our view has been to demonstrate that other locations are possible, to prevent a perfect location becoming the enemy of a great location. The trustees believe that a pump track can work sympathetically within another location, incorporating existing topology and trees while adding new planting opportunities, in a way that other formal activities displaced from the Recreation Ground could not.
We are now working, in collaboration with the Parish Council, to bring visions of those possibilities to the community for consideration at a public consultation. The trustees would love to hear from anyone interested in helping with this visioning stage of the pump track project. Please get in touch with us via info@hipumptrack.uk.