Lake Grounds, Grove Park and 21 named play areas are lined up to leave North Somerset Council for town and parish councils. Every site, town by town.

Portishead’s Lake Grounds, Weston’s Grove Park and Clarence Park, Clevedon’s allotments and twenty-one named play areas across North Somerset are all lined up to pass from the district council to town and parish councils.

The full list has never been published before. It sits in Appendix 2 of a report that went to North Somerset Council’s Cabinet on Wednesday 16 September, and it names the site, the town, the route and the year for every asset the council knows about (Local Devolution report, pages 14 to 16).

Some of it has already happened. Management of eight play areas in Weston-super-Mare has transferred, along with 32 litter bins. Play areas in Yatton are under interim management arrangements the report describes as complete.

The rest is in progress, and the report is blunt about the risks. It rates the legal and property risk red, the capacity risk red, and says of the financial risk: “Savings may be overstated.”

Published 19 September 2026.

When North Somerset's parks change hands: a timeline of the council's indicative transfer dates, 2025/26 to future phases

Every site on the list, town by town

The report calls this “a working status list only” and says it “does not approve any individual transfer, funding commitment or service change”. The year given is the council’s own indicative period.

Weston-super-Mare

  • Complete, 2025/26: 32 litter bins. Responsibility has already transferred to the town council.
  • 2026/27: eight priority play areas, management already transferred, with freehold and legal work continuing. They are Castle Batch MUGA, Diamond Batch, The Park, The Shrubberies, Thompson Way, Plumley Park South, The Runway and Walford Avenue.
  • 2026/27: town council play areas on expired leases, plus three open spaces, Verbena Way, Village Green and The Rows, and Milton Rose Garden.
  • 2027/28: the big one. Parks, recreation grounds, further play areas and open spaces including Grove Park, Clarence Park, Ashcombe Park, Baytree Rec, Drove Road, St John’s and Worle Recreation Ground. The pathway is still to be confirmed and the report says further financial, lease, income, operational and strategic assessment is required.

Portishead

  • 2026/27: the Lake Grounds, Battery Point, East Wood, Kilkenny Fields, Merlin Park and Somerset Hall, with related toilets and management arrangements. The report calls it a “complex transfer programme”.
  • Future phases: additional open spaces, play areas and land parcels. Portishead Town Council’s current proposal is to complete by the end of 2026. The council says further legal, ownership and adoption assessment is required first.

Clevedon

  • 2026/27: five allotment sites, at Victoria Road, Church Hill, Westbourne Avenue and Highdale Avenue, plus Clevedon Cemetery allotments. Freehold transfer, and the report says the sites are already managed locally.
  • 2026/27: Salthouse Fields skate park and pump track, by licence rather than sale. Complete or in final implementation.
  • 2027/28, not confirmed: play areas including Strode Road, Cherry Avenue, Esmond Grove, Teignmouth Road, Kenn Moor Drive, Salthouse Fields and Valley Road. The report says the town council has not confirmed interest.

Nailsea

  • 2026/27: the Garden of Rest, Hannah More allotment, and play areas at Pound Lane, Scotch Horn and Trendlewood. Open spaces at Millennium Park, Trendlewood Park, Pound Lane, Blackthorn Way and Morgans Hill. Boundary, heads of terms and legal issues are all still live.

Yatton

  • 2026/27: Horsecastle and Grange Farm play areas. Interim management is complete and the freehold is to follow.
  • 2026/27 or later: land next to the cemetery, where a grazing licence is among the site-specific matters still to be settled.

Winford

Pill, St Georges, Winscombe, Wraxall and Failand

  • Future phases: play areas and associated open space. These are at an earlier stage and the report says local appetite, scope and capacity all need confirming.

The council’s own warning about cost

Devolution is usually sold as a saving. This report does not do that.

The grounds maintenance contract works because it is big: shared vehicles, shared specialist kit, shared management, payroll and customer services. Break it up and the economies go. In the council’s words, disaggregation “is likely to reduce these economies of scale for all parties, including North Somerset Council, and may therefore increase the overall cost of future service provision”.

The stated principle is that neither side should gain or lose materially. What has been spent so far is small by council standards:

  • £27,000 in legal costs on phase one to date
  • £70,000 more estimated to finish the transfers already agreed
  • both funded from the council’s Transformation Fund

The council is separately trying to close a £12m budget gap for 2027/28, so the report’s refusal to claim a saving matters.

What Cabinet was asked to do

The recommendations were to note progress, sign a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with Weston-super-Mare Town Council, and adopt a “triage” system for future requests. Under triage, every new approach goes through one front door, gets sifted, and is then routed either into normal business or escalated, with assessment windows tied to the committee calendar rather than dealt with whenever they arrive.

The report is careful about the Weston agreement. It does not transfer assets, does not commit either council to funding, and “does not give Weston super Mare Town Council preferential treatment”. Weston-super-Mare Town Council was due to consider the draft at its members task and finish group on 3 September, after the deadline for the report.

Grove Park carries its own caveat. The town council has approached the district council about it recently, and the report says its appearance on the list should be read “as noting an emerging proposal, not as approval in principle or a commitment to transfer, fund or progress the request”. We covered the reopening of the Grove Park cafe in September.

What we could not confirm today. North Somerset Council has published no minutes and no decision record for the 16 September Cabinet, and its decision register returns nothing at all for August or September. So we cannot yet tell you what Cabinet decided. The meeting was streamed and the agenda is public. We will report the outcome when the record appears.

What it means for you

  • Nothing changes overnight, and most of it has not happened yet. Only the Weston litter bins and some play area management have actually moved.
  • Check who owns a site before you report a problem. The council lists confusion over “responsibility, precept impacts, public access, service standards or site changes” as a live risk, and promises “clear public signposting on ownership, management and reporting responsibilities”.
  • Watch your town or parish precept. A town council that takes on parks has to pay for them, and the precept is the part of your bill it sets. You can see how your bill is made up on our North Somerset council tax bands page.
  • If a site is public open space, you get a say. Disposal of public open space carries statutory publicity and the council must consider representations before it can sell.
  • Some of these are not sales. Salthouse Fields skate park is a licence, and several others are management agreements, so the freehold stays with the district council.

Sources