Last update: June 2025
Update June 2025: After over 3 years of planning for the Park, progress on making the Park a “destination” has been non-existent. There have been no improvements in making access to the Park by bus, foot, cycle or wheeling safe and easy. Very few improvements within the Park have been implemented and, in particular, no new well surfaced paths have been constructed.
It has, so far, proved impossible to get the City and County Councils to work together (beyond a few exploratory meetings) and, within the City Council, it has not been possible to get officers to consider solutions outside of their particular “silo” (e.g. Highway improvements by implementing solutions within the Park – a different dept – don’t seem to be possible.
The only possible movement has been the consideration by the City of making Woodlands Lane a “quiet lane”. However, the vast majority of Woodlands Lane is a County responsibility.
Derby City Council have exciting plans for rewilding Allestree Park – the largest urban rewilding project in the country. As part of these plans the Council wishes to ensure that travel to the Park (and travel within the Park) can be safely done by cycle and we’ve been in discussions about how best to link the Park to the existing Derby (and surrounding) cycle network.
As the Park is right on the edge of the Derby City Council area, some of the obvious connections (e.g. towards Duffield) are in the Derbyshire County Council area. We are working to bring the two Councils together to explore the opportunities in partnership.
We’ve created a discussion document that identifies a number of the issues that need to be addressed and also proposed possible solutions that the design of the Park could accommodate to address the issues.
We’ve had discussions on these issues, the fact that it is essential that they are addressed, and the possible ways of addressing them with various influential bodies and individuals including the local Councils (Derby City, Derbyshire County and Quarndon).
Derbyshire Wildlife Trust (DWT) undertook a number of consultation exercises with the public and created a “masterplan” for what to do with the Park. However, this was then shelved.
Key messages from the public consultation included that people wanted a good network of well surfaced paths within the Park, and that people wanted to be able to cycle to the Park. An independent organisation suggested the construction of some cross country mountain biking tracks but DWT decided that this proposal would not be taken forward. It was also decided that horses would not be encouraged to visit the Park.
Particular points that we are trying to get included in the plans include:
- How it is important to be able to safely cycle to the Park from all directions including from Derby, from Allestree, from Duffield, and from Quarndon and beyond.
- How walking on the roads surrounding the Park is currently dangerous (e.g. Woodlands Lane and Burley Lane have no pavements and 60mph speed limits in parts) and how provision within the Park can help address these issues
- How bus travel to the Park requires people to cross the busy A6 which currently has no signaled crossings and would be impossible for those with mobility limitations
- How, once visitors have been able to reach the Park by cycle, they also need to be able to reach key parts of the Park by cycle