Council wins prize for parks campaign

Northumberland County Council ran the campaign last July and it has now been recognised as the best in the UK by Keep Britain Tidy.

The Love Parks Award recognises an outstanding event or campaign that ran during Love Parks Week 2017 and Northumberland landed the top prize at an awards night last Thursday.

The Love Parks initiative aims to ensure residents and visitors use parks and protect these green spaces.

Coun Glen Sanderson, cabinet member for environment and local services, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have won this national award.

“People tell us on a daily basis how much they enjoy parks and green spaces across the county – and it was extremely good to be able to highlight so many of those reasons through this campaign.

“I would like to sincerely thank all the residents and visitors who took the time to take part. It is a great credit to our parks and local services staff who maintain our beautiful Green Flag parks to such a high standard and who have worked closely with our communications team to run a hugely successful campaign that was so highly commended by the judges.”

During the Northumberland campaign, photos and videos were posted on social media each day, building a colourful campaign which demonstrated the fantastic features of the 12 parks across the county that are managed by the county council. Thirty-three posts gained a huge 42,059 impressions on Twitter and on Facebook seven posts and videos reached 146,855 people and were viewed 67,300 times.