Wivenhoe playpark: £81,000 raised, all of it from grants

Wivenhoe’s rebuilt playpark off Mede Way was paid for with £81,000 in grants, and none of it came out of what the town council raises from residents. That figure, and the four separate awards behind it, are set out in Wivenhoe Town Council’s own funding report, published in the papers for its full council meeting on 15 June 2026. (Wivenhoe Town Council, full council agenda, 15 June 2026, pages 4 to 5)

The report, prepared by the council’s funding officer Dr Samantha Davey, lists the Mede Way park development as “fully externally funded through multiple grant awards” and breaks it down: £50,000 from Enovert, £20,000 from The National Lottery, £10,000 secured in partnership with Cllr Mark Cory from Essex County Council, and £1,000 from One Stop. It puts the total at £81,000 and says every application was prepared in house, with support from the town clerk Jo Beighton-Emms, Emma Buckley and Cllr Jon Guy.

The report’s opening is blunt about the point of all this: “All funding listed has been obtained from external sources at no cost to Wivenhoe Town Council’s core budget.”

The Enovert award is the maximum the fund gives

The largest single award is worth a second look. Enovert Community Trust distributes money through the Landfill Communities Fund, and its own guidance says grants are normally “in the region of £30,000, with exceptional projects being considered for a grant of up to £50,000”. (Enovert Community Trust, frequently asked funding questions)

Wivenhoe got £50,000. That is the top of the range the trust says it will consider, and it is not money that is handed over on request.

There is a catch built into that fund, and the council’s own accounts show it being paid. Enovert requires applicants to secure “a 10% third party contribution which will be payable to Enovert Management Limited prior to the project commencing”. Wivenhoe Town Council’s list of payments for April 2026 records exactly that: £5,000 to Enovert on 15 April 2026, invoice 1454, described as “Mede way playpark 3rd party contribution”, under the heading “Payments by Bank Transfer, To Be Made”. (Wivenhoe Town Council, full council agenda, 20 April 2026, payments list)

So the £81,000 headline is the money coming in, and the council had to send £5,000 out to unlock the biggest share of it. The council’s report does not say where that £5,000 itself came from, and the published papers do not settle whether it was met from another grant or from council funds.

How it got built, from the council’s own papers

The paper trail runs for about ten months and is unusually easy to follow, because Wivenhoe publishes its agendas in full.

In November 2025 the estates committee took a proposal that the council support an application to Essex County Council for £10,000 from the Community Initiatives Fund for the Mede Way playpark project. (Estates agenda, 10 November 2025)

In December 2025 the full council considered a proposal “that Wivenhoe Town Council progresses a tender process for the project to redevelop the playpark at Mede Way”. (Full council agenda, 15 December 2025)

In March 2026 came the decision that committed the money: a proposal “that on the recommendation of the Mede Way Working Group a contractor is instructed for the redevelopment of the Mede Way playpark following the tender process”. (Full council agenda, 16 March 2026)

The spending then appears in the payments lists. There is £5,047.32 to FH Brundle for “Mede Way Fencing” in March 2026 and £1,320 to Duncan Clark and Beckett Ltd in April for “work stage 1 including OS data purchase Mede Way project”, both in the April agenda above, followed by £1,300 to GDH Windows for “mede way playpark bow top fencing labour” in May. (Annual council meeting agenda, 18 May 2026)

By the 15 June full council meeting the deputy mayor’s report recorded simply: “Mede Way/ Community Hub, the playpark redevelopment is underway.”

The council then set the opening. The mayor’s update of 6 July, published on the town council’s website, listed “Saturday 18th July 11am official opening of the Mede Way accessible playpark”, and added that councillors would be consulting on a proposed community hub opposite the playpark on the same day. (Wivenhoe Town Council, Mayor’s Update, 6 July 2026) The mayor is Cllr Glynis Hailes-Morley.

What it means for you

If you are looking for the park itself, the town council calls it Dean Park, at the junction of Mede Way and Richard Avenue, CO7 9HW. Wivenhoe Town Council runs two playparks: this one and the one at the bottom of King George V playing field, off the High Street at CO7 9AB. Both are inspected by RoSPA. (Wivenhoe Town Council, playparks)

If you want a say in what happens next on the site, the community hub proposed opposite the playpark is still at the consultation stage, and the Mede Way and Community Hub working group remains a standing item on the estates committee, which met on 10 August and next meets on 14 September 2026. (Estates agenda, 10 August 2026) Wivenhoe also asks for lay members of the public to join several of its working groups, including health and wellbeing, communications and events, biodiversity, and traffic and transport, through the town clerk.

If you are in a group trying to fund something similar, the Wivenhoe file is worth reading as a template rather than a news story. Four funders, one of them a county councillor’s local fund, one a supermarket community scheme, one the Lottery and one a landfill tax fund, were stacked to cover a project none of them would have paid for alone. The council also paid for professional help: its April payments list shows £632.80 to Dr Samantha Davey for “Grant Funding Advice”.

Note that this park is not part of Colchester City Council’s separate programme, which starts next month and covers 34 play areas across 13 wards. Only one Wivenhoe site, Lower Lodge, appears on that city council list, because the other two belong to the town council.

More from around the district: Colchester planning news, roadworks and travel and things to do in Colchester.