Groundwork South currently run the café at the Colne Valley Park Visitor Centre in Denham Country Park on a lease from Buckinghamshire Council. This lease expires in September. The café will close on Sept 15th 2025.
The Council are looking at café lease arrangements in line with Council policy for generating income. Once new lease terms have been agreed (either with Groundwork or another café operator) they, or any new café operator, will be able to plan for and invest in improvements within the lease area of the building and the veranda.
The playground and the wider Denham Country Park outside of the building is owned and managed by Buckinghamshire Council. We helped by securing a grant for them to install the playground a few years ago, the council are looking at other grants now to improve the playground.
Like you, we care deeply about enhancing the 110km2 of the whole Colne Valley Regional Park and encouraging people to use the outdoors. The Colne Valley Park Trust owns less than 1% of the Regional Park so we have to work with a wide variety of public and private landowners to achieve improvement. Thank you for your support of our efforts to maintain and enhance the landscape in the light of huge development pressures, increased wider pressure on the countryside immediately around cities, changes to the way Green Belt is approached by central government and dwindling funding for local councils.
Buckinghamshire Council have this year cut all their funding for the Colne Valley Regional Park Trust, we are in discussions with the Council about them re-instating this so we can continue to work with them to deliver value for money for Buckinghamshire residents.
We continue to focus on our landscape recovery programme and campaign: ‘countryside in crisis: a call for action’ and are hugely grateful for the support of people who live in and around the Colne Valley
