Queen's Park & Charminster Neighbourhood Forum

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Queen's Park & Charminster Neighbourhood Forum is a community forum.

The charity of Queen's Park and Charminster (Bournemouth): enabling community collaboration, focus and funding to resolve community issues, with the aim of improving the area for the benefit of all that live, work and play within it.

22/10/2026

Queens Park Pond community meeting. The cause, phased solution, Q&A
Please register interest using link in comments below.

22/10/2026

Queen’s Park pond update.

Thank you to all the wonderful volunteers who have offered to help. I'm sorry it's taken so long for an update, but we wanted to have a bit of clarity before we did so. The good news is we've completed all of the project documents to the standard that the council required, and then, sure enough, the rain has arrived!!

The good news is that the pond is filling up nicely with all of the rain, and this means it’s now at a stage where it's probably going to be too difficult to take out the silt with volunteer assistance (good old health and safety!).

We did look at this manual dressing in detail, but established we could only take off about 3 inches of silt before we hit the clay liner underneath in the majority of the pond. It would be a lot of work for probably not a huge amount of gain. However, there are deeper areas that are up to 36’’ of silt that can be removed, but needs a digger (estimated at over 600m3 of silt!!). We then need to plan for where this goes, and offsite removal
Is over £15k!)

We're in the process of putting together a presentation with the aim of having a community meeting it at the Woodpecker Cafe on the weekend of the 16th of November at 10am (not sure if sat or Sunday is best, will chosen via poll).

We will present the findings of the council, as well as our own investigations using pond specialists in our community who have 20+ years of relevant experience and worked with defra etc. We believe that we have found what the problem is and agreed some potential ways to address these. We would like to present this to the community and have the opportunity to do a question-and-answer session - a lot of people are concerned and we want total transparency.

Thank you very much for the offers of help, but right now there is no work which we have identified that the volunteer community can do which is really going to make a significant difference for next summer.

We have identified a number of phases of a longer-term project which would save the pond and provide, we hope, year-round water. We anat to present this to all at this meeting and discuss.

We are creating a mailing for people that are interested, and will circulate this and the meeting dates in the next few days.

Thanks for all of your wonderful support and offers for help.

28/09/2026

Pond dredging is a go! Now creating necessary paperwork, there’s lots! Hoping for 24-5 October.

20/09/2026

Queen’s Park
Pond ‘volunteer dredging’ may now be allowed. Meeting BCP Council Monday. Fingers crossed!

09/09/2026

The Queens Park pond situation has become a story of interest and concern far wider than our local ward.

One of our trustees has been invited onto BBC Radio Solent and BBC South to talk about the situation and the challenges that we are facing with BCP Council.

We're sending one of our trustees, with the best face for radio, online Friday morning to be interviewed, and coming later that day to a radio near you. . .

04/09/2026

We’ve seen a noticeable reduction in tagging and graffiti across the Queen’s Park ward over summer.

We’ve been regularly, at least once a month, removing grafitti on utility boxes, postboxes and lampposts as well as other (authorised) council walls.
The reappearance is noticeably slower, and less of it. We’re also seeing other neighbouring ward areas removing tags and graffiti as well.

Ideally, we want to expand the project to include other (pending approval) council property and walls and also offer the service to private individuals and landlords.

By tackling tagging quickly, it’s far easier to remove and - as evidenced by our project - significantly reduces re-occurrence.

03/09/2026

I apologise in advance as this is not the view of our charity per se, but based on personal experience (and opinion) on the pond situation. I am a trustee of this non-political charity, and have personally spent 60-70 hours in the past year trying to get this pond situation resolved for the benefit of wildlife and community. Pretty much everyone wants this resolved, and positive action taken….almost all can’t understand why this is so hard, and should be common sense.

This post is not in any way an intention to be political, support or detract from any party (we just want what is best for our community, which we love and want to support).

But, this attached post is indicative of the problems we all face with the current “council budget and spending freeze”, and suggeste a possible solution that some BCP parishes are using, but not Bournemouth.

= = =

And we wonder why the pond is not getting the focus and relatively small budget it needs.
Admittedly, the bin in this post would need paying for (and they’re not cheap as we’ve tried to buy some - £700 each!) and we have already secure the budget for the pond dredge, so should be easier surely??

We are a party-agnostic charity, and we only want the best for our community. Here’s a small insight into the reason that even small projects are hard…..

BCP council is over budget by £23ml this year due to mandatory spending on adult and child social care, and that is meaning that by law this needs paying before any “discretionary funding” (eg waste, beaches, bins and ponds - as well as libraries!)

However, unpopular as they are, there is almost £1ml sitting with Bournemouth town council that is not going to be used for any community projects or good, for the reasons quoted in the attached post. WHY?

There may be an option, come election time, to vote on the dissolution of the unpopular town councils in May 2027 (or soon after).
The big question is what will happen to this precept money if it is not used, which by May 2027 (assuming that the precept stays the same) will be pretty much £2.5ml.

It can’t be handed back to residents if the town and parish councils are abolished. So don’t expect a council tax reduction. This means it will most likely be absorbed back into BCP council coffers, and swallowed up unseen in interest payments and social care.

Why can’t this be used, now, for community projects. And why can’t Bournemouth town council help resolve issues such as the QP pond?

We can’t get permission as a charity to dredge the pond, but Bournemouth town council can easily as it’s in their remit…..and one of their key councillors is trustee for the Queen’s Park Preservation and Protection Society. They also have the money, although not needed in this instance, to pay for the work.

I know this is going to be contentious, and apologise if someone, somewhere is put out by this. But, we’ve spent a year negotiating this pond situations and Bournemouth town council can solve this in probably one or two meetings with the right people in the room - Digital Radio Bournemouth One, Bournemouth Daily Echo

02/09/2026

We have some bad news about the Queen’s Park pond.
Despite our charity being awarded £4000 to cover remedial works and dredging of the pond, we were informed last week that BCP council will not approve /carry out the dredging.
We’ve been told this is because it needs to be scheduled with other digger works, and as these can’t be funded by the council (as there is a freeze on all maintenance spending), then our paid for / funded works also can not take place.
This the second year in a row, and we’ve been pressing for the dredging work to take place for over a year with assurances that it will be done Q4 this year.
As last year, which was also cancelled for the same reason, we highlighted that there may be another spending freeze.
We were assured that, as we had the money, it would go ahead this year….sometimes it feels like battering your head against a brick wall may be more productive……

31/08/2026

The first of our charity owned and operated CCTV cameras is installed and live, focussed on an area frequently blighted by fly tipping in Bennett Road.

These cameras have been agreed with BCP council and Dirset Police, and we have a further 4 planned for our ward.

The footage will only be reviewed in the case of an ASB or crime incident, and will be provided as evidence to the appropriate body for potential prosecution.

The charity is operating these under strict GDPR legislative regulations.

If you have concerns or questions, please email [email protected] for the attention of the data protection officer.

14/07/2026

Over 130 people attended our meeting with the PCC yesterday - thank you!
We want to make these 1/4ly meetings. (See 1st comment)

Address

Bournemouth

Website

http://www.qpc.org.uk/

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