A petition calling for Cardiff Council to repair the waterlogged paths surrounding Roath Recreation Ground has received more than five hundred signatures since it was posted last Friday.
The petition, launched by Lib Dem Councillor for Penylan, Rodney Berman, seeks support to repair the waterlogged paths surrounding Roath Recreation Ground, which have long been an issue.
Jayne Richmond, a mother who uses a pushchair around the park, has complained to the council twice since September and says the problem is getting worse.
“They’re waterlogged, there’s potholes, they’re actually unpassable,” she said.
“This means you cannot go down them if you have got a buggy or have any accessibility needs.”
“At the moment with Covid-19 social distancing restrictions, everyone who wants to use the path has got to use the pavement.
“This means that you have double the amount of people on there, so to not be able to use the path for a significant proportion of the time poses a real public health issue.”
Teresa Sueref works for Sight Life Cardiff, an institute for the blind. She met with one of their visually impaired members for a socially distanced walk at Roath Rec over the weekend and says it was an “awful experience”.
“You could get someone who is totally blind who wouldn’t know about the floods and the potholes, and they would fall,” she said.
“If you have a bad experience as a visually impaired person, it’s very unlikely that you would go out again.”
Councillor Berman says he’s been “blown away by the reaction to the petition”.
He has been asking Cardiff Council to repair the paths for years and cannot understand why money has been spent on other nearby roads, to make them more accessible for social distancing, but still nothing for Roath Rec.
“When you consider how the council has been investing money in new infrastructure to react to the pandemic in other places such as Wellfield Road, I think it’s quite justifiable that we could look at fixing the path at Roath Rec to help with social distancing,” he said.
Cardiff City Council has been approached for a comment on the costs to repair the paths. CJS News is waiting for a reply on that detail.
However, a spokesperson for the council said: “It is important to note that according to provisional data from the Bute Park weather station, more rain has fallen in Cardiff over the last three months than in the equivalent three months during any of the past five years.”
The council also says that the high levels of rain has led to a number of green spaces across the city becoming waterlogged.
Cardiff Council says: “Discussions around potential funding opportunities to improve the paths around Roath Recreation ground are ongoing.”
You can find the link to the Roath Rec paths petition here.