Across the UK, cash-hungry councils are selling off parks and open spaces to fill up their coffers.
We’re supposed to accept that in these times of diminishing government spending it’s necessary to sacrifice some niceties – but the loss of recreational green land that’s supposed to belong to us all is going too far.
To think that councils are using the funds from selling our parks to deliver services is optimistic at best. Land sale is capital. Services come out of the revenue budget.
Yet still it seems hard for the public to make a case that their parks should be saved. Councillors claiming to represent their constituents clearly feel that silent majorities outweigh the hundreds and even thousands who sign petitions, and perhaps they do. But something needs to change or we will never have a way to know for sure.
Government will tell us that there’s a community right to challenge, and yes there is. But forcing communities into whip-rounds and expecting them to outbid large commercial purchasers is not only unfair but nonsensical as well.
Ultimately, the only people who can tell a local authority whether a park is needed or not are those who use it. Those who use them for sports, take their children there, walk their dogs there. It should be the public, not the councils, who hold a power of veto over the sale of recreational open space.
Local referenda are there for us all, but they’re under-used. It’s time we had it written into law that no council can sell a public open space without a full and robust consultation – an open vote so that we can all see exactly what people really think.
I’m petitioning the Government to give us that say. I would ask anyone who feels the same to offer their support for the better protection of green spaces.
* Jim Hardaker is a Lib Dem supporter in Skegness
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7 Comments
Like many issues, I suspect trends like this will come down very much to postcodes and social environments. We recently stayed at a hotel in Westminster (virtually adjacent to MI5 HQ and the Tate Britain gallery) and were impressed by how much money had gone into the (very few) publicly accessible green spaces in the vicinity (new benches, permanent keep-fit equipment, astroturf areas for people to do exercises on and, in one area, even a nice cafe and brand new toilet facilities) and how well used these were by a wide variety of people (young exercisers, families with young children, immigrant workers meeting for a chat and using the area as a ‘social club’). With the constant calls for people to exercise more/the looming obesity epidemic, preserving and developing such spaces, particularly in postcode areas with low socio-economic profiles, would seem essential for everyone’s benefit (as the Victorian city fathers recognised). Instead of this, we have here in Wakefield a Council being forced to impose car parking charges (which many find far too high) at a local country park (created entirely by council funds in happier financial times) and the heart of one city park (created by the kind of Victorians referred to above) being threatened with sale for housing. Another sign of the trend towards the atomisation of society and “clustering” according to purely financial/socio-economic considerations well under way since the 1980s and which New Labour did very little to counter in real terms (but attempted to patch over with more forms of ‘credits’ than there are days in the week) and which, despite heart-rending/”hearts and flowers” speeches at their annual conference, the Tories are determined to drive ahead as “one nation Toryism” is well and truly consigned to the past. Yet another area where a party representing ALL the people is really required.
Well said. In any urban area, rich or poor, ask a question in a Focus questionnaire about green spaces and you’ll get lots of responses. People care. What’s more, public (or potentially public) green spaces are a community issue which can draw people together and empower them. Maybe that’s why neocons hate them.
It is also worth noticing that the current incarnation of brownfield-first housing policy does a lot to encourage this kind of thing. Brownfield targets don’t distinguish between building on a car park and building on an adventure playground, and urban parks and playgrounds tend to be on sites that would be attractive to developers if sold off (whereas “proper brownfield” sites tend to be in unattractive locations, and often contaminated land to boot)
@Jonathan – re: brownfield-first housing policy
It is worst than that, in some areas…
Whilst the article is about existing public parks there is a large reserve of publicly owned parkland that isn’t accessible to the general public, that is getting developed potentially to the detriment of the local community. I speak of former mental hospital sites, such as Cane Hill in Coulsdon south London, where the hospital buildings only occupied a fraction of the site, the remainder of the site being parkland intended to be used by the patients. Here the existing community is going to lose a greenspace to 675 homes and a supermarket and all the additional people, traffic etc. that brings with it…
Government will tell us that there’s a community right to challenge, and yes there is. But forcing communities into whip-rounds and expecting them to outbid large commercial purchasers is not only unfair but nonsensical as well.
This is a very important point, because from what I’ve seen many of the sales have been done with little prior public notice or consultation and with little thought that the general public might actually want to own their own amenities by establishing park’s trusts etc. This is perhaps because the authorities have been dazzled by the monies being offered by developers, making any community interest transaction look a very poor alternative.
Yes there is a right to challenge, it is difficult to do particularly as the first public announcement is after the land has been sold. There is also a right to challenge enshrined in the planning system, so people can object to development plans; however, they only typically have 6 weeks, which in reality typically means 3~4 weeks as it takes a couple of weeks for planning applications to be reviewed and gain press coverage, plus by this time objections have to be on planning issues and not simple objections…
In my area, last year we discovered that we had no right to challenge a planning application, only becoming aware of it when construction started! because it was in a neighbouring parish reporting to a different local authority. So whilst the local authorities informed each other of the application (which was made and approved several years previously) there was no legal obligation for either of them to bring the application to the attention of the neighbouring parishes…
Sad that such an important issue like that solicited only 5 comments. Sign the petition! I already did. Sad only 112 signatures collected.
Ultimately, the only people who can tell a local authority whether a park is needed or not are those who use it. Those who use them for sports, take their children there, walk their dogs there.
Well, we can tell but in the current climate it seems it is the grounds team who determine what does and doesn’t happen in our parks. We’ve now had two sporting events cancelled with just over a week’s notice. It seems that this group can overrule any previous agreements with other parts of the council, if in their view the event may require them to do anything more than their pre-planned and minimum maintenance work. This quite obviously leads to a catch-22 situation where organisations find alternative (non-council) venues, reducing the usage of the parks, which the councils then use as justification for disposal…