How it all began…

The idea of a friends of Sandy Lane Park group has been around for a while and over the years people have talked about it, even set up a Facebook page but nothing much happened. Until now….

In April 2024 a meeting was held at Cherry Grove Primary School and was attended by 29 people which for a 5:00 PM meeting was fantastic. The local councillor Elizabeth Mac Glashan attended and there was lots of positivity, ideas and thoughts about what could be done and what people would like to be done.

First things first!

We needed to get a committee together and get a constitution. A number of people expressed an interest in being on the committee, so in May we formed one.

Founding committee members

Heather Swainston (Chair)
Kirstin Hamer (Secretary)
Fiona Neame (Treasurer)
Juliette Hutchison
Denise Woods
Annie Scudds
Laura Walsh
Join us

Special thanks

A number of individuals and their companies have been so generous in their time and financial support to help us get started. These include:

Colum Wilde and colleagues from Clever who printed all the Flyers for the initial meetings and designed the flier for the launch event.

Mark Clayton from Tatton Consulting who paid for the banner which we displayed at the regatta and also a flag sail banner which will be so useful to promote us at events at the park.

Wendy & Matt Lewis at Stride who designed our logo which really represents key elements of the park. They also created this website!

Walkers Plant Nursery who donated plants for our stand at Chester Regatta.

Chester Regatta for allowing us the space in their marquee. There was a lot of interest in the group and a fruitful relationship with the regatta will develop no doubt.

Next Steps

Since the Regatta, the group has been busy setting up the bank account with West Cheshire Credit Union and public liability insurance and meeting with a number of officers from Cheshire West and Chester council including the Park Development Officer and Infrastructure Team Leader, this has been fruitful and we are developing an understanding and plans for what is quite a complicated site! We officially launched the group on Saturday 7th September 2024.