Client: Blackpool Council

Stanley Park Lake sits within a 260-acre public park that was designed by Thomas Mawson & Sons in 1922 and built-in 1926. The park is Grade II listed and has been voted by the public as ‘UK’s Best Park’ at the annual Fields in Trust Awards – the park won the award in 2017 and 2019.

Stanley Park has developed a successful activity and sporting offer including a high ropes course, orienteering, rock climbing, cycling routes and a large sports centre with athletics stadium and associated sports pitches. The lake is an original feature of the park and has traditionally been used for pleasure boating. Historically sailing took place on the lake as well as pleasure tours provided on the oar propelled ‘Samuel Fletcher’ lifeboat.

A range of ‘shallow water’ watersports such as canoeing and kayaking have been introduced on the lake. Supporting infrastructure includes a centre with changing facilities, toilets, storage area and briefing space. Our work focused on assessing the opportunity to develop the water sports activities offer and include:

• Carrying out a site assessment and review of the existing operation
• Assessing the market trends in the watersports sector and an analysis of the residential population base and tourism market
• Identifying and using a weighted scoring matrix to evaluate the different end uses. For the preferred uses, we set out indicative development costs
• Producing an outline financial model
• Setting out the benefits associated with the project

Find out more about Stanley Park here.

Contact us
If you have any questions or would like to discuss our work within the activity sector please don’t hesitate to call Richard Linington on 023 9248 1999 or email consulting@pslplan.co.uk