A proposal to build an all-wheeled bike park in Hillsborough Park is underway, but has sparked some controversy with local people.

Tonya Snailum, who lives in the area, said: “The idea of a bike park is great particularly for kids and also usable for people of all ages.”

The proposed location of the bike park would be in the corner of Hillsborough Park next to Middlewood Road, where there are a number of residential houses nearby.

Mrs Snailum said: “I am completely for having that facility in the park, it’s just the location of it, it’s literally the worst possible location in terms of its impact on people who live next to the park.”

A few years ago the council placed some benches in the same area which attracted anti-social behaviour at night. One incident involved some youths setting the bench on fire and subsequently throwing them in the pond.

Mrs Snailum has lived in the area for 20 years and described the difficulty it caused for people who lived there; some houses were broken into and it “felt like you weren’t able to use your outside space.”

There have also been criticisms of the consultation process. Many of the residents on Middlewood Road are elderly and only received one flyer through the post informing them of the decision to implement the park right outside their houses.

Luke Wilson, Project Officer at the Parks Service, said: “If people want to use public spaces at night for things that are illegal or anti-social then that’s an issue that we need to consider as part of the design to try and work locally with people to try and stop them.”

The implementation of the all-wheel bike park is a result of collaboration between Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Hallam and Access Sport.

Hillsborough Park has remained largely unchanged since 1779 and has all the hallmarks of a classic English landscape park.

This is why when choosing the location of the park, Landscape Architect Elsie Josland from Access Sport was left with little choice about where to put it as planning permission for any other area of the park was not granted.

Gareth Jones, who works in Behavioural Health Psychology at Sheffield Hallam spearheaded the programme specifically to see how we can utilise urban sports to keep young people active.

He said: “We want Sheffield to be the most active city in the UK, so we need to engage kids in youth programmes to keep them active every day.”

Not only do Access Sport put the track down, but they also ensure there is coaching and free equipment available to make the sport as inclusive as possible.

Eleanor Allison from Middlewood Road said: “It’s important to get kids out and about especially now we are in an age where they are all addicted to screens and it is something free for them which is good.”

In a survey of 830 people, 90.6% of people were in support of the all-wheeled bike park proposal, with 695 people saying they would be interested in using the park.

The park would include a practice track which is flat to encourage beginners to be more active.

Should the park go ahead, it would be fully implemented by Autumn 2020.

For the most part there has been strong support, but people in the area will be looking for a solution to solve their fears of anti-social behaviour.