Camden New Journal - News: outrage over security fence

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Camden New Journal - by SIMON WROE
Published: 9 August 2007

Clare with her daughter Savannah, 7, showing the scar under her arm

Outrage over security fence that could have killed child

PARENTS on a Kentish Town estate are up in arms over a “brutal and unnecessary” council fence that has scarred their children.
Standing more than two metres tall and lined with metal spikes, the fence on the Ingestre estate was built to keep vandals and noisy youths out of a wooded nature area.
But instead the fence has been the cause of protests, acts of vandalism and serious injury – which residents claim were not problems before it was installed.
On a hot summer’s day in May, seven-year-old Savannah Smith tried to climb into the reserve beside her aunt’s house.
As she clambered over she slipped, the spikes tearing into her armpit and leaving her skewered on the fence.
She had to tear her wound further to free herself, but remained trapped and bleeding inside for 20 minutes while neighbours dug a hole under the fence because no one had a key to the gates.
She needed 35 stitches in her arm at the Whittington hospital.
John Loughran, chair of the Ingestre Road Tenants’ Association, said the fence had been erected two years ago to “stop motorbikes riding into the woods” and to “give children somewhere to play”.
He insisted at least one of its four gates was open from 9am to 9pm every day and that children could ask him if they wanted to get in, although he admitted he was not always on the estate.
But residents this week told a different story.
Clare Smith, Savannah’s mother, said: “We never thought it would be this high, and we were told the caretaker would open the gates every single day. But they are always locked, that’s why no one could get in to help her.
“The doctors said if Savannah’s injuries had been in the neck or the lung she would have been dead by the time people got in to save her.”
Ingestre resident Ruth Granoth claims Savannah is just one of five children known to have hurt themselves, some seriously, on the fence.
She believes there may be many more.
Although the council has now moved the fence one metre away from a ramp that provided easy but dangerous access, it remains a bone of contention for many residents.
A spokesman for Camden Council said: “The fence aims to prevent anti-social behaviour taking place on what was an unsafe area. It has brought back in to full use a green space that residents can now enjoy.
“The kind of fencing is used all over the country and is considered safe for this kind of use.”

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