Norton Grange Community Centre

" We plan to hold events in the park, clean up days, and planting days to have the community involved in positive events in the park to build up positive momentum about the park in the local community with events planned to start in mid-summer. "

Norton Grange community centre is right at the centre of the Blue Hall/Norton Grange estate which is in the top 10% most deprived in the UK. When the centre was first built there was very little consultation with the community and there was a significant amount of antisocial behaviour around the community centre including breaking windows on the centre.

Groundwork took over the running of the centre and began involving local people in the running of the centre and it has come a long way since then with the community becoming involved and all the after-school and HAF sessions run by the centre are now full or over-subscribed. The centre also runs a community pantry which was running low at the end of 2022 beginning of 2023 with much higher demand and a lower amount of donations than usual.

Conflict: North Park, deprived area, lack of skills and knowledge according to the IMD for the area. The staff at the community centre are brilliant at community engagement. One has a background in care work and adult education so is wonderful at community engagement. However there is a lack of knowledge or skills to do with growing or greenspaces but a lot of enthusiasm about this.

This enthusiasm is stoked by the fact that their local park which is a huge area of greenspace stretching from North Norton to Portrack. There is a high amount of antisocial behaviour related to the park particularly related to drugs. This has accelerated recently especially after the lockdowns. I have spoken to many residents about the park and many of them used to walk through the park regularly however many people who would have felt safe to walk through the park no longer feel safe to do so.

This behaviour used to just be centred in the part of the park that runs through the Norton Grange estate. Many of the residents I spoke to used to feel safe walking around the area of the park near the prison. However this antisocial behaviour seems to have spread across the park with scrambler bikes used across the whole park. The added issue with this is that this is Stockton Council land. All of the issues are compounded that this is Stockton Council land and despite multiple reports Stockton Council are currently unable to be being involved in working on these issues.

Resolution: With the coordinated efforts of the Norton litterpicking group (Norton Clean Up Your Act), Norton Community Centre, Local Police, Local Councillors, and other community groups we plan to hold events in the park, clean up days, and planting days to have the community involved in positive events in the park to build up positive momentum about the park in the local community with events planned to start in mid-summer.