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Let’s extend our Heath
• THE two letters you published on April 23 about the changes to the Heath, told a story.
One letter was from a curious group of worthies drummed up to support the plans which include the infamous new road, and one from a lone opponent.
The story is really that both sides assume that the other does not understand the issues involved. So the Heath management think they are misunderstood, and that their pure motives are maligned, and the opponents feel that the management are brutal spoilers, not listening to the public.
Rather than play this game, may I suggest that everyone unites behind a plan, hinted at in the draft plan for the Heath, to extend it from the Lido to Kentish Town, across the railway lands that run between the two?
This would be an exciting project, continuing the huge efforts of the early pioneers who battled against enormous pressures to give us the Heath we have today. This may be the last piece of unbuilt-up land adjoining the Heath, and it is quite large.
Everyone will say it is polluted, it has great commercial value, it is a classic “brownfield site” for building, but is not built up now, and it is already in the public ownership of Network Rail. We own it!
The early pioneers who rescued the Heath for us would not have been deterred by the difficulties, and nor should we. Talk about it, look at maps, contact your councillor and your MP. What an exciting prospect, to be involved in the last chance ever to extend the Heath.
I hope the Heath management committee stops worrying about rebuilding a café and building a road, and worries instead about how to extend our Heath. A fraction of the time and money spent on the road scheme spent on this instead, might make more people grateful for their efforts.
Adam Leys
Willes Road, NW5
Failure of consultation
• THE Hampstead Heath Consultative Committee does itself a disservice in vilifying the Say NO To The Road Campaign (April 23).
Our campaign was formed six months ago with the specific objective of addressing the ill-thought-out proposal for a vehicle only access road from Gordon House Road to the site of the Parliament Hill depot.
We wanted to prevent the main footpath onto the Heath from the south being turned over to the exclusive use of vehicles. The 9,750 people who signed our petition understood this.
We didn’t trick people into signing the petition by misrepresenting the proposals as the committee’s letter suggests. Nor did we suggest an alternative route for the road.
We carried out the job that the committee should have been doing, namely consulting local people, gathering evidence and carrying out a critical scrutiny of the Corporation’s proposals.
The Corporation failed to consult those most affected by the proposals, namely the residents’ associations and three schools directly adjoining the Parliament Hill Triangle.
The committee should have taken issue with this failure to consult local people properly.
The culmination of our work was 18 pages of evidence presented to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Copies were provided to every member of the consultative committee, but they declined to discuss it publicly at their March open meeting. Given that they are not due to discuss our petition until July, it is hard to know on what authority your correspondents wrote.
The responsibility of a consultative committee is to hear, debate and give voice to different – and dissenting – opinions. It needs to be at arm’s length from the Corporation not in its shadow. It needs to demonstrate independence not blind obedience.
Many of the people the consultative committee claims to represent are opponents of the road and signatories to our petition. There was not a consensus about this proposal in the organisations the committee members represent so they had no business in giving unanimous approval and becoming the public advocates and main cheerleaders for the road proposal.
Sadly this is not the first time that the consultative committee has failed to take an independent stand. Many of us remember their docility during the campaign to defend the ponds in 2004 and 2005. Then, as now, the committee fell in uncritically behind the Corporation. It was the strength and visibility of public feeling that saved the ponds from closure.
The consultative committee is also wrong to presume that Say NO supporters have not been involved in other campaigns to defend the Heath.
For many of us, this is the latest in a catalogue of battles (including Millfield Lane). Looking ahead, the Corporation has an opportunity to look afresh at the future of the Parliament Hill Triangle as the Heath Management and Consultative Committee will soon be electing a new chair. We look forward to some constructive discussions.
Eleanor Bley Griffiths,
Gospel Oak youth councillor
Sally Barker
Dartmouth Park Avenue
Helene Curtis
South Hill Park
Garry Williams
Glenhurst Avenue
Patrick Turner
Mansfield Road
Julia Dick & Ros Bayley
Lissenden Gardens
Kiki Kendrick & Robin Smith
Mackeson Road
Sophie Radice
Grafton Road
Patrick Turner
Mansfield Road
No sign of ‘conflict’
• THE letter (A Sad Day for the Heath? April 23) had an impressive group of signatories, and it may well be that the whole plan had merit.
The fundamental problem, speaking as a non-partisan Heath user, is this part of the letter: “the best way of removing the existing conflict between pedestrians and essential vehicles on the busiest path on the Heath (from Highgate Road to the café.)”
What conflict?
I eat at the café regularly.
I walk past it at all times of day and have for many years. I have walked a dog, I have cycled, I have taken parties of disabled elderly people by foot and wheelchair, and have even taken groups of elderly people to the café by mini-bus (at less than 5mph with hazard lights on). From either side, I have never experienced, or even heard of first-hand, any “conflict.”
I don’t know, but it may be a decent plan was torpedoed because a completely artificial problem has been manufactured to make it go more smoothly.
In any event, the signatories of the letter owe Heath users an explanation as to why they are still claiming that there is a conflict between vehicles and pedestrians that simply doesn’t exist. Please, explain.
What “conflict”?
Spencer Woodcock
Address supplied
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