Current Scheme

Current Scheme

In 1893 the essential objects of the Charity were changed to the following:

"providing and maintaining, or providing or maintaining, open spaces in the borough of Leeds, for the benefit and recreation or health of the inhabitants. In providing such spaces, due to regard shall, as far as practicable, be given to those parts of the borough where the streets are narrow and the houses small…"

There were ancillary provisions, including allowances for "an open space" which, though an improvement to the town, may not be in strictness for the benefit and recreation or health of the inhabitants", but the "open spaces" purpose was fundamental and the 1893 Scheme left the trustees with fairly limited discretions.

Between 1893 and 1939 the bulk of the Charity's existing open spaces were acquired, but by 1939 it was felt that the objects of the Charity were too restrictive in the changed circumstances of the day. In a detailed note drawn up in 1939, Colonel Bousfield, the then Clerk, pointed out that the Council's policy of slum clearance had already produced large open areas in and around the city centre, that the slum population had been largely rehoused in new estates where there were plenty of air and space, and that the Council were themselves levying a rate for the maintenance of the open spaces which Wade's Trustees had provided. There was therefore a proposal to widen the objects of the Charity, and this led to the Amended Scheme in 1940 which enlarged the Charity's objects to include the following:

1. " The purchase or taking on lease of land for use as allotments…"

2. "The purchase or taking on lease of land for use as playing fields…"

3. "The provision of facilities for recreation amusement entertainment and of general social intercourse for the inhabitants for every age of areas of population in the city of Leeds occupied in the main by the working classes including in any such objects the establishments of what are commonly known as community centres or youth centres…"

For this last purpose the trustees were empowered to purchase, adapt, or take on lease land or buildings and also "to co-operate by means of money grants or in any other way that seems to them suitable with a local authority or parochial church council, the YMCA, the YWCA, The National Council of Social Service, the Leeds City Young Men's Christian Association, Boys' Work Committee or any other Authority, association or body which is engaged from time to time in the provision of facilities for the recreation, amusement, entertainment or general social intercourse for the inhabitants of the areas of population in the City of Leeds occupied in the main by the working classes or which is engaged in the establishment of community centres or youth centres."

These objects remain in force today.