Thanet District Council ran the "I Love Dane Park" public consultation from Wednesday 14 February to Friday 30 March 2007 in a bid to whip up a little excitement about the park and get some direction for changes. Direction, it my cynically be suggested, that was mostly planned already. (Something I am sure Cllr. Shirley Tomlinson, or any other member, will deny vigorously).

According to the council's own website: "Results from the "I Love Dane Park" consultation show that local people want to see better lighting in the park in the future..." [SOURCE: "I Love Dane Park" - consultation results, Thanet District council website]. This work is supposedly well underway with the lighting already in place but local reports indicate otherwise.

Yesterday I took a trip tot he park on a fact finding mission and "Warning: Dane Park in Unsafe Hands?" was the result. As I mentioned at the end of that Article I went back there that night to find out more...




As part of my regular exercise I go for a run or a cycle with a friend most evenings. Saturday we took the bikes to Dane Park for a game of dodge the pothole and for the first time I was very glad of the suspension system on the bike.

The first thing that surprised me was how empty it was. As far as we could tell there was not a soul in the park. On colder days when running used to take us that way there were always a few kids kicking about ready to say rude things under their breath or from a good distance to a pair of blokes attempting to get fit.

But this day, which had been so spring like saw an empty park and it is not to hard to see why. The primary gathering point (the swings) is now a building site and the work that put the lighting in has left (as I already observed) areas of uneven ground. This would not be so bad if all the lights worked.

I counted twenty two not working as were very carefully peddled around the empty park. It might have been a little scary at night before but now it is downright intimidating (and we had our own lights with us).

The main through path is 50% illuminated and 50% dark and the side path that ran past the play area and joined it boasted no working lights at all. It is now clearly a perfect spot for committing unsavory acts on passing strangers and we did not hang around to see if the local dangerous folk had figured this out yet.

At a rough guess I would say between a third and a quarter of the park has broken (non working lights) less than a year after they were put in. The next step, it seems, is to drop our local councilors a line and see what they have to say for themselves. They had better hurry as my wife has asked to write the next article on Dane Park and I understand that it is almost ready.