Tag: Grounds Maintenance

Work for Bristol Parks

As from 1st February 2015 all grounds maintenance in Bristol’s parks and green spaces has been taken ‘in-house’. This means that everyone cutting grass, emptying litter bins, maintaining shrubs and flower beds now works directly for Bristol City Council rather than being employed by contractors. Over 40 people transferred to Bristol City Council on 1st February from the two contractors who previously covered parts of the city.

Bristol Parks now have a range of vacancies and a recruitment open day will be held on Tuesday 17th February between 12am and 8.00pm at the Old Council House, CORN STREET, BS1 1JG.

Details of the opportunities available are shown below:


bcclogoAre you adaptable? Do you care about the quality of what you do? Do you want to do something that matters?

We are currently recruiting for many roles – across a range of casual through to seasonal and annualised hours roles. They are available across a wide variety of services, and you can apply for as many or as few as you like.

Seasonal and annualised hours
Grounds Maintenance in Parks, Cemeteries, Plant Nursery,
Salary range £15,523 – 17,714 (BG5 – BG6)

Casual staff
Catering assistant (£7.68 per hour), Caretaking, Play Park assistant and Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC)
Salary range £15,523 – 17,714 (BG5 – BG6)

So, what’s all this about then?

We’ve shown you each of the main areas of work below, and given you a little bit more info about what the jobs are – don’t just read this though, come along to our Open Day – find out about us, the role, and you can even apply there and then – all of these roles are practical and hands on, so we want to make this process the same!

Grounds maintenance
The roles involves maintaining our formal parks, conservation areas, sports pitches, woodlands and heritage estates. Roles are also available at our cemeteries and crematoria, caretaking sites, and plant nursery. For these roles you should be willing to work outdoors in all weathers.
You will carry out a range of practical tasks including grass cutting, horticulture and pruning, fine turf and sports maintenance, litter picking, facilities cleaning and other grounds maintenance tasks. You could also be working in our Plant Nursery, from sowing seeds through to planting and creating planters which will are sent off across the country.

Catering
Working in our Catering business’ at either Ashton Court, Blaise, Canford Park or Oldbury Court. This role will involve a range of catering roles including preparing, cooking and serving hot drinks, meals and snacks. Taking payments for sold items and working as part of a team to deliver a high standard of customer service (the hourly rate for these posts is £7.68)

Caretaking
We are also looking for Caretaking staff on a casual basis which involves cleaning of communal areas in Bristol City Council Housing sites and general site maintenance.

Household Waste Recycling Centre
Working to support the waste centres to run effectively, helping customers and the smooth flow of waste and recycling around the site

Play Park assistant
Primarily at our Hengrove site, to ensure the smooth running and effective monitoring of the site for young people to enjoy.

A recruitment open day will be held for all of these posts on Tuesday 17th February between 12am and 8.00pm at the Old Council House, CORN STREET, BS1 1JG. This will be an opportunity to learn more about the job, speak to us and get help completing and submitting an application. Although we would prefer to see you at the open day, if you really can’t make it, email us at Pamela.jones@bristol.gov.uk and state all the posts you wish to be considered for, and we can send you an application form.

If you want to come and join us, and work for Bristol City Council and be a part of Bristols 2015 European Green Capital year, we look forward to seeing you there!

Neighbourhood Partnership Parks Consultation

Through the Neighbourhood Partnerships, a consultation is taking place that is intended to help residents and local groups, to influence Bristol City Council’s new Grounds Maintenance specification when the work is brought in-house in February 2015.

This is a separate process to the discussions that have been held between Park Groups and Bristol Parks at recent BPF meetings.

The new consultation has no closing date – the intention is for a continual dialogue with the Neighbourhood Partnerships so that influencing and contract changes can take place throughout the year.

Neighbourhood Officers will be consulting with local park groups, users and other interested bodies to understand their priorities so that the new specification can reflect this as best as possible.

Things that can be influenced include: areas to be weed sprayed, grass cutting regimes, litter collections / litter picking, a site presence (park keeper) or not, which shrubs to maintain, what ornamental planting should take place, frequency of hard surface sweeping, toilet opening / closing.

Once information has been gathered through this initial consultation, the Environment Subgroups / Neighbourhood Partnerships will be asked to establish themes for the whole NP area, e.g. littering, ornamental planting etc. This will become the base in which the Parks Service will build the new specification around for launching in February 2015. Thereafter, the Parks service will want to allow local communities to influence and introduce local park aspirations, e.g number of bins, different types of grass cutting regimes, introduction of bulb planting etc.

You can take part in the consultation via the link below either as an individual or by completing the form on behalf of your group. You will need to make separate submissions for each green space you are interested in. Park Groups should also be contacted by their Neighbourhood Officer to discuss this consultation.

www.surveymonkey.com/s/groundsmain

Parks Maintenance

The Bristol Parks proposals to bring the grounds maintenance ‘in-house’ for at least 2 years from March 2015 were agreed at the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday (1st July).

The Cabinet report can be seen here

As discussed at the BPF meeting on 28th June the plans are for the grounds maintenance work to be brought back in-house which will give more flexibility to change specifications and priorities.

Neighbourhood Partnerships and Park Groups will have more say in what is done in our parks and park groups or others will be able to do more in their parks to improve them if they wish. We will continue the discussions started with Bristol Parks at the meeting about the mechanics of this.

Despite what you may have seen in the media, Bristol City Council / Bristol Parks have made no references to volunteers cutting grass and there are NO PLANS FOR THAT TO HAPPEN.

Core maintenance will continue to be carried out by the current in-house teams and contractors until February. The Contractors’ employees who work on the Bristol contracts will then transfer to BCC via the TUPE process and will then be employed directly.

The Labour group amendment to this year’s budget delayed the proposed £1/2m budget cut to the Grounds Maintenance budget by 12 months to 2015/16. The proposed cut is 8.5% of the existing net budget of £5.9m. (The actual cost of Grounds Maintenance is £7.3m part of which is covered by income so the actual cut is a slightly lower percentage than this; the figures are in the Cabinet Report). As such Bristol could be said to have got off lightly compared to other core cities, however, cuts on this scale will have an impact. Prior to the 2015/16 budget being finalised in February, the BPF committee will be arguing that the year in which Bristol is Green Capital is not the time to make these cuts.