Last week I was invited to attend a cricket groundsman forum run by Brian Sandalls at TurfCareBlog. It is a regular Wednesday night get together that allows groundsmen to talk with other members and peers. 

It followed up on my recent article co written with Brian about the top five frustrations of a groundsman. We wanted to see if any of the participating groundsmen wanted to highlight or say any more about this subject. 

It turned out the same old issues were in the minds of these members - resources, pay and career development. On these subjects, I duly offered my two penneth worth of knowledge, wisdom and enthusiasm along with the other participants.

As far as career development there was plenty of discussion about pay, retaining staff and, more importantly, how we encourage young people to come into our industry. This issue is going to be a national problem in the coming years across all landscape, horticulture and sports turf sectors. 

I hear many accounts from managers advertising for staff and finding it nigh on impossible to find the right candidate who is interested in pursuing a career in our industry. This can often be blamed on poor levels of pay being offered and the fact it can involve weekend and evening working. Worse still, some do not have the desire to undertake manual work.

For me, one of the biggest problems is that we as an industry have failed to portray the real benefits of working in our sector on a national level. For many years it been left to individual companies, businesses and organisations to promote potential jobs and careers.

Maybe it’s time that the likes of BIGGA, GMA, Fields in Trust, Amenity Forum, BASIS, Lantra , universities & colleges,  Parks Management Forum, Landscape Institute, RHS and many other national representative bodies and organisations, came together to create a national campaign that could promote the wide and diverse range of careers on offer in this exciting industry.

We should have a mechanism for our successful horticultural and sports turf professionals and business MDs to be able to go and promote the values and opportunities of working in this sector in schools.

Every school child should be made aware of the opportunities on offer within our industry.

I have been saying for many years we should be inviting schools and colleges to come to our trade shows and see for themselves the diversity, scale and size of our industry.  

Maybe this new initiative would then inspire a new national apprenticeship / academy scheme to be set up with funding found from government and private businesses to ensure we have an appropriate opportunity to attract new blood into the sector.

It could be run on a two-year programme with candidates having the opportunity to have proper work based learning at say four venues, say, six months working at each venue while at the same time attending college one day a week and coming away with a recognised certificate / qualification.

This apprenticeship would be the catalyst for people to fulfil a wonderful career. I just don’t think the youngsters of today quite understand the unique and wide-ranging opportunities that are on offer.

This pandemic has shown us the importance of our parks and public open spaces, sports clubs and the countryside. We just need to see the value of investing more money into its infrastructure and maintenance.

It is time to become more pro-active and finally bring this diverse industry together to collectively achieve some of the aims outlined above. 
We are still essentially a very fragmented industry. We now need to come together more than ever. Let’s hope that some of the above organisations and leading businesses start talking and begin working together to safeguard the future of our landscape and sporting assets. 

Which brings me on to a very worrying development I come across in the Wirral.

Safeguarding required

There is a very interesting video been posted on YouTube. See below

It highlights the plight of four council golf courses that are potentially to be closed to save a miserly £270,000. It is well worth a watch. The loss in my opinion would be devastating for all concerned. We need to start protecting these land assets. Once they have gone, they are lost forever. 

This again points to the fact that we have a profit and loss mentality, which in my opinion has been the driver for many lost services within local authorities. I remember when I was a local parks manager most services were subsidised fairly heavily. But how do you put a value on people’s welfare and mental health?

It was the norm for these facilities to be provided. But since budgets have been lost dramatically, dumbed down, lost to other departments and yes, wasted on many occasions, we are now in a situation after many years where the historical maintenance budgets are now cannot fulfil the needs and requirements of a living landscaped facility.

There is a real need to safeguard the further loss of these valuable land assets. Therefore, we need to see a change in government policy and a support strategy to obtain and guarantee the future land assets such as Brackenwood GC.