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Redbridge residents are being urged to vote for two of the borough's parks in line to receive improvement grants worth £400,000 each.

The Mayor's Priority Parks Campaign is offering ten parks from a shortlist of 47 from around the capital the money to help make their parks "cleaner, safer and greener".

Two parks nominated in Redbridge are Fairlop Waters Country Park and Goodmayes Park.

Grants will only be given to those parks with the most amount of public votes.

A mixture of sport and leisure....

The money would be used at Fairlop Waters to develop the venue into a state-of-the-art attraction offering a mix of sports and leisure activities including sailing and climbing, improved footpaths and cycle ways and protected wildlife spaces.

A popular vote for Goodmayes Park would be used to create cleaner, more welcoming natural space with new flower beds, improved entrances and an outdoor gym.

Fairlop Waters Country Park

Iain Varah, Chief Culture and Leisure officer at Rdbridge council said:Ìý "When you look at how much the Victorians spent on their parks, they put in an awful lot of money and we're reaping the benefits of that.

"And I think that from our perspective we've got to look at creating a legacy for future generations of Redbridge.

"[The money] won’t do everything we want to do in the parks… [but for local people to] view them as cleaner, greener places that people want to spend their time, I think you can easily justify £400’000…"

Fantastic opportunity

Cllr Linda Huggett, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Culture and the Olympics, said: "Redbridge is blessed with fantastic parks and open spaces for relaxation, sport, nature, children's play and organised activities and the Council is committed to making them even better.

"This offers a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference to Redbridge's green spaces. We are now calling on residents to vote for their parks."

In addition to the public vote, Redbridge Council has also submitted a separate bid to the Greater London Authority for £2m to develop Fairlop Country Park both as a regional and local attraction.

If successful this money would be used to commission an artist to work with the local community to help landscape the park. Cycle and pedestrian access to the park would be increased and improved and a climbing boulder park, sensory garden, and a project to help increase wildlife diversity would also be established.

Londoners can vote for their parks by logging onto www.london.gov.uk/parksvote or by text message.Text 'parks' and your postcode to short code 62967. This will automatically vote for the closest park to where you live. Texts will cost 10p plus your standard network rate. For postal voting Post – You can request a postal vote form by calling the Greater London Authority on 020 7983 4100. Voting closes on Friday, 30 January 2009.