Stockport Isn’t Shit: How volunteers in Greater Manchester’s leafiest borough protect their green space
At the last census in 2021, Stockport was the fifth most densely populated area in the North West, according to the ONS.
As discussed in the previous feature, anybody travelling through Stockport will be met by the now-common sight of half-finished steel structures and cranes.
With the increased interest in Stockport, it’s unlikely that that population density is going to reverse any time soon.
People want to live here, and they need places to live.
However, as ever with blossoming developments, there is a natural insulating fear that sets into a community, when they see foreboding structures creeping towards precious nature spots.
Green space is important to people, and is a key issue that influences decisions to move from city centres and towards places like Stockport. A Manchester Evening News report on Ancoats found that people value green space extremely highly, and this could explain some of Stockport’s attraction.
However, as in many communities, there are those that take little interest in the state of their surroundings, so it falls to admirable volunteers to maintain their patch.
SK Litter Pickers are a family team, made up of dad Andrew Machin, his partner, and their two children, Ernie, aged 10, and Ted, aged 7, the stars of the SK Litter Pickers Instagram account.
The page was launched through the pandemic and has been going strong ever since, being picked up by local media and even garnering support from global Stopfordian sensation Blossoms.
Andrew said: “These green spaces in Stockport at the time of Covid, you didn’t realise how crucial they were, because you only had that little bit of a window of an hour you could go out a day.”
Despite the world returning to relative normality, Andrew still works from home in Edgeley, a densely packed area of Stockport, so the importance of nearby nature has not diminished for him and his family.
Andrew continued: “Working from home on calls all day, it drives you mad, so I have to get out.
“You need these spaces, and they need to be maintained.”
The 38-year-old feels that maintaining his local parks as a place to be proud of is even more crucial at a time of heavy development in Stockport, as he sees smaller patches of land disappear for construction projects.
“The sad thing is though, and most green spaces now, I look at it whether it’s Stockport or wherever, is that’s going to get turned into housing at some point,” Andrew said. “It’s just those little spaces, where you might have gone out and had a little kick about or just built a little den or whatever, just to kill a bit of time, they’re going now.”
As he looked around Edgeley’s Alexandra Park, where we were sat, he said: “These bigger green spaces, which they are not going to build on, are even more important for Stockport now.”
Stockport Council have a ‘brownfield first’ policy, which pledges to develop on disused land rather than nature sites and designated parks, but as space is quickly filled near the centre of Stockport, people like Andrew feel increasingly protective.
Stopfordians are always looking for innovative ways to introduce nature to the packed-in rows of residential streets.
Suzie Cloves spent her early life in a remote part of the Isle of Wight before settling in Stockport, via periods spent in London and Brighton, experiencing the full spectrum of green space and cityscapes.
Her formative experiences with nature led her to transport that energy to Edgeley, setting up a community project called Grow Edgeley, which has reclaimed two formerly barren planters with flowers and art installations.
As we sat in Hollywood Park, a natural border between Edgeley and the new town centre development site, with cranes hard at work in the backdrop, I ask Suzie if she fears development seeping into one of few relatively untouched green landscapes in Edgeley.
“Yeah, I am concerned that developers will just do things without thinking,” she said. “You can get developers who will just pay lip service and say the right things, and you can also get companies that actually put a lot of thought into stuff and doing it right.”
With such preciously few places to access nature locally, this is a big gamble, but she doesn’t believe there necessarily needs to be a trade-off between nature and housing at all.
She said: “It is a tricky question to answer because I’m not against development, and I know that people need somewhere to live, and people need jobs.
“I don’t think that a city and nature are mutually exclusive, like I just went to Rotterdam recently and it’s really tightly interwoven there.”
Despite Stockport recently being dubbed ‘the new Berlin’, the 42-year-old doesn’t believe the approach of our European counterparts is a one-size-fits-all solution, but they have shown that a model exists.
For Suzie, despite recognising that groups like Grow Edgeley offer a multitude of benefits, she fears there may now be an over-reliance on volunteers for community upkeep.
She said: “I think the dependency on volunteers is really tricky, because as soon as there isn’t anyone who’s up for doing it, for whatever reason, it falls away.
“The people that I know, who work within the council, they’re absolutely stretched to the limit. They’re really good people. They’re really passionate about doing what they’re doing and doing the right thing. They’ve got tiny budgets that are constantly getting smaller.”
Andrew from SK Litter Pickers recognises similar, that his volunteering may once have been a job for the council, but budgets are stretched, and priorities must be taken.
He said: “It’s good for that community aspect of our being in the background for the council, they need that in Stockport to build that rapport around, because Stockport’s massive, isn’t it?
“They’ve got other things to focus on, like maybe the hospital or anything else.”
Other than wishing for an increase in the number of bins in his local park, Andrew is content with the current setup and enjoys his volunteering.
He reports that local councillor Matt Wynne has recently rebirthed a defunct scheme of community service litter picks. Andrew’s main challenge is now ensuring he leaves them enough work to do.
Between the council and local heroes, work is constantly ongoing in Stockport to ensure it can reap the rewards of increased interest, without forfeiting that precious connection to nature.
