TurfPro editor, Laurence Gale writes:

One of the biggest challenges our industry faces in the coming years will be inspiring the next generation of turf professionals to join our sector. We desperately need to start finding ways to encourage more people to come and work in this diverse, international industry.

To help start this process, I have asked a number of our leading professionals to write a piece about how they came to work in this industry and the opportunities it has given them.

We begin with two parks professionals...

Philippa Reece, parks and foreshore Manager for Adur and Worthing Council

Tell us about yourself?

My name is Philippa Reece and I am the parks and foreshore manager for Adur and Worthing Council. I have worked in this sector for 19 years now but have only recently moved here for work. This is the first time that the coast line is part of my remit and portfolio. I presently have 93 parks

 
Who or what inspired you to take up your career?

I would have to say that the consistent for me has always been Sir David Attenborough BUT, ultimately our natural world inspires me. Its beauty, its vulnerability that is at our behest and also how amazing it actually makes me feel when I am immersed in it. Never ceases to amaze me with its beauty.

Which individuals have inspired you or helped you develop professionally?

Chazley Farghaly from Manchester City Council who at the time worked in parks but from a regeneration point of view. He always was willing to spend time, listen to questions but not always give me answers around them really enabling growth and learning. I also learnt so much from Barry Noble also from Manchester City Council regarding play and grounds maintenance services as the head of those teams, I learnt so much from him and was also given opportunities in that process as well. Jo Walsh also from Manchester City Council. What did not know about trees, did not exist. The learning obtained from Jo about trees not only the technical aspects of them but also their role in landscape architecture and history has served me well.

What three pieces of machinery or innovations have in your opinion helped drive our industry forward or helped make your job easier?

Smart devices for communication in all forms. Scheduling technologies to really streamline our worlds of work as well as here in Adur and Worthing Council our robotic line markers for sports pitches. All of these have made working life a lot easier. 

What concerns do you have for the future of our industry?

Skill decay and opportunity for apprenticeship approaches into the industry as a process not being on the table is a concern. Becoming more and more difficult to recruit and to find people who meet the basic requirements. I guess that is reflected in me being recruited into my post as I moved nearly 400 miles to come here for work and there were no internal applicants at all. 

How do you think we can entice the next generation of industry professionals to come and work in this industry?

Pay. With years of below inflation pay rises we are now not in the position where our pay is desirable. Cost of living being so expensive to go along with that there will always be that tipping point and we passed that many years ago. The other side to that coin is that our jobs need to be desirable enough that pay is not the main driver. Our jobs are amazing, the opportunities and things we get exposed too I don't know any other line of work that have these - so how do we show this? How do we give that insight? If I look back on bullet points of my working career I've worked as the events manager at the reforming of the Stone Roses concert, I've worked on pilot projects for the home office where I've had to sign the official secrets act and now, I'm out on a speed boat along the coast - how many jobs have those levels of variety and opportunity? 

 
How have the events of 2020 impacted on your job and how would you like to see the government support our industry?

My role was totally transformed. I was redeployed to work in bereavement services full time for 3ish months and am still working here 1 night a week and gone through a formal qualification and training as part of that.

Delivery in parks as well has been very challenging with social distancing not being possible in our usual operations re sharing vans as we are a mobile service and not all staff members are drivers. Also the really increase of usage of our sites as they played such a vital role in lock down in peoples lives. With this came difficulties in waste management - emptying of bins, litter picking and all the extra costs associated with this. We also had a huge increase in calls with people wanting to know what they can and can't do connected to accessing beach huts, can they play bowls / football / cricket etc and how social distancing effects them. This was really challenging as data / guidance / information was continuously changing as well. The documents that came alongside all of this from the government were also very long and needed reading in depth to understand how this is going to affect us as a team / as individuals and all our clients and park users as well. So complicated and unsettling all the time.

I'm really proud of my team for working through it all to keep our parks looking amazing for everyone to use but to also be in a position that when sport was enabled again, that we could very quickly turn these sites round to being ready to use again by all sporting groups.

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Chris Worman MBE, Rugby Borough Council’s parks and ground manager

Tell us about yourself?

I started my career as an apprentice gardener for Leicester City Council at the age of 16 and quickly moved through the ranks to become a team leader before I was 21, before moving onto Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council as parks and cemeteries officer and now Rugby Borough Council where I have been manager for 18 years.
 
I currently manage over 350 hectares of green spaces ranging from the Edwardian Caldecott Park to recreation grounds, woodlands and nature areas. Like most of us in local government you also get “added extras” which in my case is responsibility for approving road closures for special events, vice chair of the local Safety Advisory Group and war memorials to name just a few.

I became a Green Flag Award judge from the very start of the awards and 2021 will mark 25 years volunteering for the scheme. For my service to the Green Flag Awards and public parks I was awarded an MBE in the Queens 90th Birthday honours in 2016. I was has appointed to the governments Parks Action Group as the parks industry representative in 20017 and made a fellow of the Landscape Institute in 2019.

 
Who or what inspired you to take up your career?

To be honest I hated school and didn’t learn well in a classroom, so I knew that I would need to have an outdoor career. Growing up in an inner city environment meant I had also used parks a lot as a child, and with my father being a big sportsman spent many a Saturday and Sunday afternoons watching him play in the local leagues.

So as I was taking my CSE’s in the spring of 1984 I happened to stumble across an advert in the local newspaper for trainee gardeners at Leicester City Council. I was lucky enough to secure a place and as I left school in the June of that year I started work in the July at the tender age of 16… and the rest, as they say, is history

Which individuals have inspired you or helped you develop professionally?

There are a number of people who have inspired me over the years, and continue to do so to this day.  My work ethic, drive and public service ethos comes from my grandmother. She was a child during WW1, and saw the impact it had on the small village where they lived. This gave her an incredible drive and passion for life and a belief in making the most of any opportunities that comes your way.

On a professional level it has to be the great parks advocate Alan Barber. His talks were always inspiring and just filled you excitement, enthusiasm and passion to keep going for the love of parks. His words resonates just as much today as they did back then. 

Equally I am fortunate enough to meet and know lots people across the parks sector, both in the UK and beyond, who I continually take inspiration from. I won’t name them, as many are friends, but they continue to help me develop professionally to this day. We never stop learning.

What three pieces of machinery or innovations have in your opinion helped drive our industry forward or helped make your job easier?

Firstly is the ready mixed white line marker. Simple I know, but when I started in the 80s you mixed up 'dandies' full of gallons of water and  lime and had to wheel it across the park or load precariously onto the back of a truck. 

 
Secondly, remote controlled embankment mowers which have transformed the safety of cutting inclines. Going forward I believe remote controlled mowers will become more commonplace in all settings.

Thirdly, I guess its technology itself as we use hand held tablets for inspections and communications which has helped the sector become more far more efficient by reducing a lot of duplication of effort.

What concerns do you have for the future of our industry?

My main concerns are around funding, attracting people into the sector and the looming skills gap that we have across the parks sector. Everything else really flows from there. We somehow need to break out of the constant funding problems, so I have to ask where are we going wrong? Why can’t we convince our decision makers to invest in parks? If funding is not forthcoming to the parks sector then I really do believe we will lose a lot of the benefits they bring now, and can bring in the future.

How do you think we can entice the next generation of industry professionals to come and work in this industry?

There are a number of factors that we need to consider here. Firstly we need to tap into the enthusiasm and passion of young people around the environment and climate change agenda to encourage young people into the sector. We then need to embrace the opportunities that this may bring to encourage them to remain, and invest in them as individuals whilst also having the means of sharing some of “our” knowledge with them, so we can pass on our good and bad experiences to help them grow in this career. Crucially however we need to be seen as a sector that worth joining. We need proper and sustainable funding.  Who wants to join a sector that’s just managing a rapid decline of our national green infrastructure, and spend their time removing community facilities rather than providing them? 
 
How have the events of 2020 impacted on your job and how would you like to see the government support our industry?

Covid-19 has brought many challenges; different ways of working, home working, redeployment of staff, emergency planning, business recover planning, closing facilities, opening them and closing them again - and endless Teams and Zoom meetings. Equally its also focused a lot of attention on how people engage with their local green space. Some people have rediscovered spaces on their doorstep that they haven’t visited in years, whilst others struggled not to sit on the grass, soak up being outdoors and enjoy the sunshine, even when they knew they shouldn’t! The public are now rightly wanting these sites invested in and improved to meet the needs of the local community, and help create “liveable” places.

The challenge is now for government to back up their words of support for parks with a package of funding to support them.