20/10/2025
CHAIR’s ANNUAL REPORT & AGM MINUTES & NOTES-ARISING SINCE
AGM date Monday 15 September 2025 at 7.00pm
our kind hosts: Hampton Prep School
FoCP Committee Members Present (100%):
Jane Erridge, Jaz Bennie, Liz Searle, Sarah Cooke, Sue Anderton,
Derek Sanders (Chair)
The Chair welcomed all FoCP member/attendees to this Friends’ AGM and introduced our current FoCP Committee, including Mrs Jaz Bennie – a well-established resident of Wensleydale Gardens. In 2024 Jaz was proposed and we then invited her to join us; she was co-opted in 2024 until we could seek your support at AGM. (At close of this AGM, all committee members received a positive vote.)
Overall report:
Since our last AGM in 2023 we’ve been simply delighted by the level of activity and quality of our Park Management’s main contractor Krinkels Ltd (previously trading as Continental Landscapes Ltd). Our only sadness is that a few of the recently planted trees appear to have suffered a severe lack of watering (but that’s maybe hardly- surprising after our unusually dry summer – as we and our residents clearly couldn’t bring sufficient water on site to make any real difference).
However we have really suffered whilst watching the snail-like progress on our beautiful pavilion, a building that’s still awaiting a reopening of its two changing rooms and a new central area for a future café proprietor.
A Café?! Are we kidding you?! But when? And when will cricketers be allowed back in their changing rooms? Sadly its still: “don’t hold your breath”.
Four cricket seasons ago, our two regular Summer-Weekend cricketers found they’d been locked-out of ‘their’ changing rooms and showers. Thanks to a crazily-illogical schedule of work, cricketers were then left unable to enter their changing rooms until the rooms at least had new external-entrance doors installed. Those doors were only installed earlier this year. But even today, yet more work is needed before the rooms can be released for use ie. extra work that the Council’s planners now require before the building can be released to the cricketers and then be ready for would-be café proprietors to view and then tender their offers to establish and run our Carlisle Park café.
This time last year we were delighted to learn that Richmond’s Facilities Management (FM) Operations Manager was eventually ‘retired’ and replaced by a refreshingly new FM Ops Manager (a temporary appointment that’s hopefully soon ‘to-be-confirmed’). Progress in 2025 is now visible, but the Council’s final Health & Safety reviewers have now demanded two more bicycle racks be installed on the tarmac close to the cafe, and they also demand a “bat-slip with attached bat-box installed behind it” must be installed on the main roof. And now, only now, they’ve decided that the upstairs apartment needs fire-&-sound-proofing protection between café’s-ceiling and upstairs-flooring. So that’ll doubtless mean our new café won’t be trading until at least Spring ‘26.
Summary of all other subjects covered…
Here's a list of all items we swiftly addressed in our Superfast AGM…
I’m first showing you the Agenda’d AGM subjects & comments that we were able to cover; I list the pre-listed subjects in bold and add a brief-summary of our comments at AGM, plus any/all new-news that’s arisen since our September AGM…
1. Please welcome your volunteer FoCP Committee members: Jane Erridge,
Jaz Bennie, Liz Searle, Sarah Cooke, Sue Anderton, & Derek Sanders.
2. BatWalk at dusk: Friday Sept 19th for adults with children aged 6-17 years.
We were lucky with the fine evening weather, and the bats were keen to fly. We raised a happy £130 contribution for our leader’s London Bat Group that evening.
3. Cricket Nets – we now expect that the new pair of 4-metre-high cricket nets will begin being installed in the two weeks-commencing Oct 20. Work starts next week!
4. More Cycle Racks for café users & tennis players – the extra two new bike racks will be installed on the tarmac just around the corner of tennis court #1 – facing the pavilion. (We’ve asked for more bike racks eg. down past the tennis office, closer to the gym and tennis courts, but we got a “no, no more yet”, “not at present anyway”.)
5. LIME bikes: YOU can call LIME management to register complaints on 0800 808 5223 or email: [email protected] Lime management tells us their users mustn’t leave their bikes inside Richmond-council owned parks. But we all know it happens.
6. Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) – we’ve asked Parks Management to consider adding (as part of their next 2026 PSPO update) a new bye-law to prevent dogs lingering inside the ‘wild garden’ ie. the gated-area behind the outdoor gym (that’s to the right of the tennis courts). Parks Management has agreed to consider this change.
7. Spring Flower planting on grassed land. We planted approx.350 bulbs late last year for spring flowering, and we were hoping to do it again this year. We had also entered Squires’ bulb competition this year but sadly failed their 500+ spring bulb promotion. But our usual Autumn bulb supplier ‘Parks Management’ this time awarded other parks in Richmond with an allocation, which left none for Carlisle Park this time around. OK, we ‘ve been lucky up ‘til now, so we’ll stay patient and apply to Parks Management next July “for more daffs for us to plant in Autumn ’26”. We’ll surely be lucky next time.
8. Wild Flower Mini-Meadow (the narrow strip in front of our seven wonderful newly ungraded tennis courts) – thanks to the tennis court resurfacing and fencing upgrade work earlier this year, refreshing the wild flower beds in front tennis courts 1&2 was sadly rendered pointless this year. However, a major reworking/replanting effort has been requested and agreed; but as yet we’ve had no news on the likely timing of this work. That area will need lots of new wild flower seeds and some yellow rattle seeds to discourage grass-growth.
9. Park Locking: It’s a “Well done & thankyou” to the 41 of you who wrote to formalise your plea to please keep Carlisle Park locked overnight. Gareth Roberts our Council Leader also fixed it so that the ‘old’ Weekend later-morning gate unlocking times of around 9am. have been revised to match the much earlier weekday unlocking times.
10. Picnic Etiquette. We’ve asked many times now for a few “fixed position table+bench-seats” but we’ve again had a “sorry, but Carlisle’s had lots spent on it”.
11. Group Picnic planning: Dear all, do please encourage family friends to take all their picnic leftovers and paper plates / rubbish etc., home for recycling.
12. Full Bins – and pleeeease don’t let others tempt the night-time foxes by leaving their picnic leftovers in bags left on the ‘top of a bin’, nor ‘on the ground’, as most of us now know, foxes love to grab stuff, tear it open, and spread it all around. And then often pooh on it.
13. Dog Pooh – please call-it-out. If you’re not so close to the dog-walker who hasn’t yet spotted his/her dog is suddenly squatting to pooh,.. do try alerting & calling-out nicely, in quite a loud and clear voice: “Dog’s doing a pooh” (saying it twice works well). Don’t make it personal, as you maybe don’t really know “who’s dog?” it is. I always do it that way; it seems to work well. It can work even better if others are nearby and in view. Please give it a try.
14. Toilet Mischief – My children always loved playing with water. Especially when the two of them were together and out of sight. So please, if you’re near the toilets and can hear children “enjoying themselves” in the toilets, do please consider ‘just popping-in-there’ and casually using the basin to quietly wash your hands. If they’re up to mischief, and even if you don’t feel strong enough to ask them to “please stop making a mess in here”, just stand and stare at them until they decide to give up and leave. Taking a picture of children behaving badly is certainly not against the law if you’re snapping a picture - to report bad misbehaviour in Park property – your action can help prevent our parks’ toilets from forever being locked-up “for repair sometime next weekend”.
15. Peeing in the Park (and worse)… Urinating in a public area is not-just-offensive it can be quite disgusting. And a man carelessly exposing his private parts while peeing is clearly a reportable crime. Defecating in a public park is an even more gross 999-reportable crime. And yes, this has happened quite recently.
It’s sad that our men’s toilets have too often over recent years been locked/blocked, however our new FM Ops.Manager has finally had our Gents foul-water drains gug up and straightened / sorted!.
So, from now on, any cricketers “playing in whites” that’s seen peeing behind hedges MUST NOW be regarded as behaving unnecessarily-rudely (and should be reported to their Club’s Captain or Chairperson). If you can‘t determine which club it is that is playing that day, please just note & report ‘on which day (& date) it was that you saw him/them coming out from behind any hedge, and maybe re-adjusting their trousers. And take a photo of the offender if you can. Use “report a fault” to submit your report and add your photo.
16. “Report a Fault in the Park” – if you spot a problem or fault in our park, try taking a photo of it on your mobile phone – especially if it’s tricky to describe it, and then, when you get back home, please Google the above phrase and use that ‘web app’ process to report problems that you think Parks Management should be made aware. It’s easy to do. (If you’ve got a smart-phone with you, take a photo of the problem and add that photo to your report. Don’t take a video/movie of the problem unless you’re going to be ready to email that video/movie to Parks Management NB: the Report a Fault web app can’t accept video/movie files.) This fault-reporting web process is the best way to report most Park problems, because Parks Management audit how quickly your web-based reports are assigned & fixed.
NB: if you’re reporting a problem within a building in a park eg. toilet or washroom, remember to first select “building problem” as the problem category, then proceed to describe the building and then the problem.
17. Defibrillator on site? No, not yet. We’re working on it. But we can’t yet make any promises. We’ll continue to work on it and will feedback when we have improved clarity on possible options. If you have experienced the joy and pitfalls of managing the shared-use of a defib., you could probably help us. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch at [email protected]
18/1. AOB item 1: Car park route-marking, hash-marking, disabled-vehicle and speed-limit marking; all these need to be refreshed. (Parks Fault-report to be raised / Done)
18/2. AOB item 2: Carlisle Park Bowling club seeks our help & support re a few young pests who persist in throwing twigs etc from the car park, over the hedge and onto the playing green – often during match-play. The Club’s staff know to call ParkGuard when they’re unable to stop this mischief, however can we adults – and parents - please counsel any children we see joining-in on this sad behaviour.
MEMBERSHIP: If you’re local and love our park, but not yet ‘one of Carlisle Park’s Friends’, please email and tell us you’d like to join us. Membership is free, and we promise we won’t often bother you. Please just tell us your name, street name and post code.
NB: our meeting ended as scheduled, at 8:30pm.. Refreshments &
social chats continued ‘til 9pm..
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NB: Document owner: Derek Sanders as Chair of the Friends of Carlisle Park
