Camden New Journal - News: Protesters fight Royal Parks plan for five-a-side football pitches

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Camden New Journal - by TOM FOOT
Published: 27 September 2007

Battlers to be in chains

Protesters fight Royal Parks plan for five-a-side football pitches

THE Friends of Regent’s Park have pledged to chain themselves to trees and stand in front of bulldozers if plans to concrete over five acres of meadowland get the go-ahead next month.
The group, with more than 1,200 members, met on Monday in the Danish Church in St Katharine’s Precinct to discuss ways to fight an application from the Royal Parks Agency and Goals Soccer Centres Ltd to build 10 five-a-side football pitches.
They fear tawny owls and rare bats will leave the wooded grove at the north entrance of the park with plans to axe 60 trees and build a fully-licensed bar and car park on the site.
The plan is being contested by high profile campaigners Geoffrey Robertson, QC, the journalist Simon Jenkins, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
Labour MP Frank Dobson said the closure had brought his biggest-ever postbag and campaigners claim no other application has received more objections during consultation.
Chairman Malcolm Kafetz, who has led the campaign to save the site, backed calls to mobilise a “group of agitators”.
He said: “We are arranging meetings and we have influential supporters. We do not believe these facilities are needed.”
The Friends accuse the Royal Parks of a policy of “thoughtless money-making” – the stealth privatisation of public parkland with events like the Frieze Art Fair and the annual ‘Smoothie’ festival.
But RPA’s chairman Nick Biddle appeared to bate the baying crowd of around 150 with historical justification for staging commercial events in the park.
He said: “Regent’s Park was designed as a money-making scheme for the crown. It was originally a hunting ground for Henry VIII.”
He added: “There is commercial pressure on us and we are trying to get the balance right.”
Tory councillor Daniel Astaire, the lead member in Westminster council for environment, blamed the government for cutting £110 million from RPA coffers.
He said: “It is clear from these figures the funding the parks receive will not allow them to clear this backlog of works without them having to seek funding from the commercial sector.”
The RPA failed to renew the lease to the Regent’s Park Golf and Tennis School on the site. The popular school closed, after 99 years in operation, at a loss of £25,000 to its owner Chris Meadow since March.
The Goals application is likely to be judged by planning chiefs in Westminster council on October 31.
A Downing Street petition has been launched and anyone wishing to object should contact the http://freg.nmpc.co.uk

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