Palmerston Residents Association

Our photographs show the Band Stand, the Children's Play Park and what remains of the Boat House, we must ask why these facilities have been let run down at a time when anti social behaviour is ripe on our street. We hear quite often that our park was used as a drinking den and our young people destroyed it. Victoria Park has been there for many years and in its later life it had more facilities than it has today we see that our park is not very family orientated it has no toilets the Band Stand is always closed and I cannot remember when a band ever played there.  Our second photograph shows a children's play area but as you can see from our photograph it is not very inspiring or even adventurous enough to keep our children amused for any length of time, we see in our third photograph the remains of what was the boat house that was demolished only a few years ago. We must ask the council why this is happening and why its removing facilities from this great park or has it got another agenda? The Residents Association has been active trying to convince our MLA's and our councillors just how great an asset this park is to East Belfast, but our words seem to be falling on deaf ears. We see rate payers money being used to build facilities in the park only to be demolished or to have so many restrictions put on them that it becomes not viable for community groups to use.  Yet our councillors do not seem to realise that if the communities are to tackle anti social behaviour we need parks like Victoria Park for our young people to use. So we must ask again Who Is The Real Friend Of Victoria Park and the Community Who Use It?