Proposal to stop locking park gates in Islington

Welcome to our dedicated page for the proposed changes to our park gate locking service. Here you can learn more about what is being proposed and share your thoughts with us.

We’re determined to make Islington a more equal place, and ensure resources are allocated where they are most needed and have the greatest impact. As part of this, we are reviewing the way we lock our parks.

Background

• Before 2015, all 92 parks with gates were locked overnight (there are a total of 122 parks and open spaces)
• In 2015, we stopped locking 46 parks leaving meaning 63% of parks and green spaces in the borough are currently left open all night
• Locking of parks in the spring and summer months only starts at 9pm takes up to 3.5 hours to complete. This means most parks are not locked until late at night, diminishing the potential benefits from locking. The locking only starts at 9pm to ensure parks remain accessible to the public for longer in the warm and light periods of the year
• We are proposing to stop locking the remaining parks, except for three sites locked by the community and three by park keepers (Highbury Fields - Sports Area, Rosemary Gardens, and Whittington Park)

This proposed change will save £140K. We plan to reinvest £40K to enhance our Parks Security Budget, allowing us to better address anti-social behaviour (ASB) across all Islington parks (all 122). We have partnered with the Civil Protection Service and Park Guard to improve our response to ASB. We will be introducing additional new evidence-based tasking and a short-term temporary lock process to react to and disrupt ASB if it occurs. This will mean we can be more proactive in preventing anti-social behaviour, and reactive and responsive when it does occur, across all our parks. This does deliver the necessary saving but means we can provide this service in a more flexible way.

Proposed New Service Features

• Additional Park Guard patrols (two patrols instead of one for most of the year)
• Temporary locks for sites if needed
• Mobile CCTV towers if required
• Static security presence for ongoing issues
• Work closely with the Civil Protection Service to use a more intelligence and data to target ASB hotspots
• Support for residents to set up community lock schemes

We are sure there will be concern that the stopping of the locking service will lead to an increase of ASB issues. If the saving does go forward, we will be closely monitoring ASB reports to ensure we respond quickly to any notable increases. The monitoring will also look to identify whether the additional patrolling capacity has a positive impact on ASB levels across all sites.

Next steps

We want to hear from local people how these changes may impact you. It could be that you live alongside a park which is currently not locked, and you would like to see more patrols in that park. Or it could be that you feel worried about a park near you that may not be locked if these proposals are put in place. It may be that local people have ideas and solutions that council officers might not have thought of.

Have your say

Our survey is open from Monday 10 March until 11.59pm on Monday 7 April. During this time, we are encouraging residents to share their views and ideas on these proposals.

Please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section for more information.