Troubled council-owned trusts running three of Slough’s parks could be merged, according to new council plans.
The charitable trusts run Salt Hill Playing Fields, Langley War Memorial Field and Bayliss War Memorial Gardens – and are supposed to generate their own income.
But Slough Borough Council has effectively subsidised them by paying for some of their maintenance costs – with cllrs being told last year the Salt Hill trust was ‘basically out of money’.
The council has been considering the future of the trusts since May last year.
Government-appointed commissioners, sent to oversee Slough Borough Council after it went effectively bankrupt in 2021, said it had to end its subsidies to the trusts.
They said the trusts have to find ways of generating their own income.
Papers presented to cllrs on the trustees committee, set to meet on Wednesday, 16 April, suggest a plan for the trusts is still to come in a ‘future report’.
But it says one option could be to merge them all into one trust.
The papers say: “Having the three parks trusts going forward is administratively burdensome and has cost implications on all three trusts.”
Trustee committee members were told in July last year that Salt Hill Playing Fields Trust had ‘basically run out of money’ as the costs of maintaining them far outweighed their income.
They were told that as a result the trust was on course last year to spend £49,150 more than it earned – and its savings could become overdrawn by £38,019.
Slough Borough Council strategic financial manager John Hickson said: “Salt Hill has basically run out of money, and it actually goes into negative reserves.
“That is a significant issue and we’re going to have to work very hard to turn that one around.”
The council also revealed last May that funding for Langley Memorial Ground could run out in 10 years.
The trust’s most recent accounts show that while it has an income of £6,605 a year, it has an annual maintenance bill of £16,605.
The council helps to plug the gap by paying for some of the park’s maintenance from its own environment budget.
Baylis War Memorial Garden – on the eastern tip of Baylis Park – brings in £1,600 a year, and has annual maintenance costs of £9,346 and reserves of £75,800.
Cllrs on the trustees committee are also being asked to approve the closure of three other, largely defunct trusts.
These include the Chalvey Green Memorial Trust, which was set up to manage Stabmonk Park but failed to maintain it ‘for some time’.
The others are the dormant James Elliman Trust, which was set up to award grants for ‘recreation, or any other leisure-time occupation’, and the Glyndwr Trust, which ran an outdoor centre in south Wales that has since been sold.
