Vision are delighted planning permission has been approved to provide a kiosk café on Christchurch Green and are excited at the prospect of providing the facility for users of Christchurch Green and the local community.
The new sustainable café kiosk has been carefully designed to fully integrate environmentally into the park. The café will be run with green principles at its heart, avoiding the use of single use plastics and serving as many locally sourced beverages and snacks as possible to keep food miles to a minimum.
Christchurch Green is an incredibly busy space and we want to support local people to enjoy our parks and green spaces as much as possible. Whilst we know that there have been come concerns raised through the planning process, there are also many local people looking forward to the café and we want to assure residents that we want to hold onto and improve the village and family feel of Christchurch Green. Here are just a few comments reported by our Park Rangers about the new café:
`I think the kiosk café will make a great addition to Christchurch Green’ – Martine
`This is wonderful news and saves me walking to the High Street to get a hot drink and it will be easier for older park users who cannot walk as far’ – Bradley (Dog Walker)
`It will be safer for children, as they do not have to cross the road plus more seating is always welcome’ – Ashley Parent)
`Will add something new to this wonderful area, with more seating and staff based on site’ – Alexandra
We are now progressing plans to hopefully see completion towards the end of November as we work with contractors to prepare the site in advance of the kiosk’s arrival. There will be work to provide power and water to the space and then some grounds work to prepare a base for the kiosk. The total cost of the café and all the ancillary work will be a maximum of £100,000.
In order to support the café kiosk and small events there will be a daily staff presence on site, additional bins located around Christchurch Green and litter picking patrols will be expanded. Therefore, as part of this process we will be looking to recruit local people to work as Hospitality Assistants and Park Rangers across Christchurch Green.
Wanstead benefits from such an active, creative community and we want to engage with local people and groups to help organise activities from craft workshops, talks, Sunday afternoon jazz all the way to puppet shows and school choir performances, all centred around a small café space serving sustainably sourced drinks and treats. So, we would like to take this opportunity to ask any local groups that would be interested in being involved to contact us at enquiries@visionrcl.org.uk so we can begin to develop a programme ready for 2022.
