A plea has gone out for Wrexham residents to lobby their councillors over proposed cuts to the parks service.

Barbara Jones, who chairs the Friends of Bellevue Park group, is urging people to let elected representatives know their strength of feeling over “terrible” plans to cut £100,000 from its budget by changing the parks service.

The local authority intends to press ahead with proposals to cut the number of rangers at the county borough’s 11 country parks, with the Streetscene service helping staff to clean the parks.

Mrs Jones said: “The consultation document that went out returned just about 3,000 responses.

”When you think we have over 100,000 residents in our town this is a minute amount for councillors to take as a consensus.

”Please ask people to contact their councillors as soon as possible asking that these cuts do not happen.

”Cuts to parks, music lessons in schools, teaching posts across the whole of Wrexham, social service cuts to young and old and parking charges in country parks, along with many more, are all proposed.

”This cannot happen – the welfare of our children and children's children are at stake.

”The wellbeing of our parents and grandparents is in jeopardy but if we sit back and let this happen we have only ourselves to blame.

”Please get in touch with your local councillor and make your views known.”

Cllr David A Bithell, lead member for environment and transport, said “Proposed changes to the county parks delivery model are just one part of the difficult decisions this authority is facing for the coming year, given the difficult financial settlements we have received.

“The proposals for country parks are designed to remodel how we operate these facilities, with the intention of ensuring safe and attractive facilities for visitors and residents while minimising the impacts on our country park programmes and activities.

”I have provided an assurance that some facilities, such as the animals, will continue - but we are remodelling the service to ensure future resilience as we are doing with many other services in this difficult period of austerity.”

The proposals are among a raft of potential cuts as the authority looks to save £13 million in the next two years.

The council’s final budget for 2018/19 will be ratified at a full council meeting on February 22.

To find your councillor’s contact details, go to www.wrexham.gov.uk.