Glendale secures major contract in Kingston

Glendale is proud to announce that it has been contracted to deliver a broad range of grounds maintenance and landscaping services to one of the UK’s most progressive councils with an abundance of parks, play areas and open spaces.

The contract is worth close to £2m per year and started on the 1st of November 2021 with all the team at Glendale looking forward to the new working partnership.   

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames is located along a stretch of the River Thames where the Hogsmill River joins the former at the town of Kingston. The borough contains over 30 parks, 24 playgrounds, sports grounds, and open spaces. There are also over 20 allotment sites which are either self-managed or run by the local council. An assessment conducted in 2006 identified 165 hectares (410 acres) of park and 340 hectares (840 acres) of other open spaces in the borough.

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames is committed to the development, management and maintenance of its parks, greenspaces, and associated assets. In recent years there have been several initiatives to improve the facilities in parks and greenspaces through capital investment in areas such as children’s play areas, footpaths, and outdoor gyms. Volunteering is another success story with over 7,000 hours and 800 individuals encouraged to participate in a typical year. These include corporate volunteers, parks friends and community groups. Biodiversity and the climate emergency are two of the authority’s priorities and will become an increasing focus within the next few years. It is expected that Glendale will be adopting increasingly relaxed maintenance regimes to encourage biodiversity and the authority will expect Glendale to contribute positively to such initiatives.

The Kingston London Borough Council has recently published its biodiversity action plan and developed a Biodiversity Partnership. Glendale will become a stakeholder member of the partnership and is therefore expected to contribute to the objectives of the plan.

The Greenspace Strategy was renewed in 2021 and covers the period to the end of 2027. It is an expectation that Glendale will be a vital factor in realising the ambitions of the strategy.

Due to recent events and austerity measures, the revenue position of the authority is severely constrained, and this has had the effect of limiting the range and quality of what can be achieved. Glendale therefore had to create innovative proposals to develop facilities, reduce costs, improve quality, and increase income generation.

The authority has successfully operated through a Partnership Board with an open and transparent accounting process, through previous contractual relationships and intends to continue with this approach. The attendance at partnership board, which is held quarterly, is for senior officers of both the authority and Glendale and is chaired by the lead authority member with responsibility for environment.

Glendale offers an all-encompassing green space management service at a national and local level. They are skilled designers, suppliers and distributors of grounds maintenance, tree management, landscaping, landscape architectural services, planning consultancy and woodland management activities, tackling these, and various other green space management tasks, for public and private sector clients across the UK. They also provide a range of winter grounds maintenance services including winter gritting and snow clearing services.

Glendale is a national company with a local feel, led by a team who care deeply about their people and the industry, dedicated to delivering the best possible service for clients across the UK.