Broken glass left in children’s play park after anti-social behaviour

The Times understands young people were involved in underage drinking and vandalism at the Ballynure Road beauty spot on Saturday night.

Litter and broken glass was left in the children’s play park on Sunday morning.

Cllr David Arthurs took to social media to condemn those behind the incident.

Commenting on Facebook, the Independent representative said: “Once again we have seen that young people have used this park as a drinking den and have left all of their rubbish behind them.

“The council provides this park for everyone from the town and across the borough to use. It is a regular occurrence on a Sunday, where I have to contact our parks staff to get them to come to this particular park and clean up after people.

“Our parks are not for this. They are for everyone to use, especially children. It is disgraceful that these people have been using the park like this.”

The Ballyclare councillor added: “They should not be in here at this time of the night. From a council point of view this is costing us money every weekend to clean this up.

“There is coloured liquid on the slide and it looks like people have urinated on it.

“As elected representatives we get it all the time that we don’t provide anything for the young people to do. It seems the main aim of the people who caused this damage is to wreck and smash.”

Commenting on the issue, a council spokesperson said: “Council is aware of the anti-social behaviour at the weekend in the War Memorial Park (Ballyclare).

“The area was cleaned and cleared on Sunday morning before 11am. Council is working with other agencies to review the situation.”