£17,000 has been raised for Temple Newsam Park to add another two mobility scooters to their collection. These are free for all guests and help to assist disabled and elderly people when visiting the establishment.
Each scooter costs approximately £8,500 and the park currently have a total of four. 300 people came together to raise the money, including a number of charities. Sovereign Health Care was just one of the charities, who raised a total of £5000 towards the cause.
Kauser Mukhtar is the Community Programme Coordinator for the company and said that “we give money to a large range of charities but we’re normally looking at health and wellbeing charities.” They decided to go through with the donation because “we are keen for people with disabilities especially, having access to the same services and provision that everyone else has access to.”
There is a total of 1500 acres of land across the park, making it inaccessible to people who struggle with their mobility. This is why Geoffrey North, the chairman of the park, decided to introduce the scooters. He said that, “we’ve had some lovely comments about the scooters… so all the work we put into raising the money was worth it.”
Locals were also very positive about the scheme. One explained how the scooters aided his mother in her final years, “she was 86 and her hip had started to go so this was a boom.” He highlighted that “we couldn’t be more grateful.”
Thanks to the new investment, the scooters have enabled many people with restricted mobility to enjoy the full beauty of the park. “We are conscious that a lot of the parks in Leeds do not have these facilities,” Geoffrey said.
