Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Finsbury Park 5 a side football consultation
I have been down to Finsbury Park to have a look at the the plans and talk to some of the Haringey Council staff about the possible plans for a 5 a side football scheme. Its just initial consultation to gauge public feeling in the area - worth going down for look and a chat.
Tags for Forum Posts: finsbury park, finsbury park 5 a side, parks
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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If the request is to HoL, Joe I'm afraid I don't have the time right now beyond the time I already give to this site. I'll let other admins speak for themselves. Perhaps there's another member who can help. It's pretty much self-explanatory on these petition sites.
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This from Haringey Friends of Parks:
Paul Ely said the council had been consulting on the proposal to have a commercial five a side centre with a bar and additional car parking within the park. He was collating the results of the consultation, which included 140 opposed, and would put a paper to councillors. Dave Morris said the Friends of Finsbury Park were opposed and the Forum supported them.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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In the discussion of the fiver-a-side football consultation, there's a recurrent theme of a lack of gratitude to the council.
Finsbury Park (FP) is clearly a problem for Haringey Council.
Not only is this large land area generating little income at present, it actually costs the council money for maintenance year after year (libraries are similarly cash negative and of course, schools far worse)
This recurring problem could be solved if there was a policy of out-right sale of Finsbury Park, instead of the timorous attempt at raising a small amount extra, and putting in a little car-park (with the fiver-a-side proposal). The regular partial privatisations of FP over the summer – where significant areas of land are literally walled off to non-payers – go nowhere near meeting the real running costs.
Let's have some honesty from LBH and an admission that FP is simply losing the council's money.
In order to help our council, we should be coming up with imaginative ideas for intensive commercial exploitation of this useless piece of open land, begging for development. Perhaps the five-a-side is just to establish the principle and the council really does have plans for significant development (as they did over one third of Down Lane Park).
It should not be forgotten that the council has a large number of highly paid executives in River Park House to support.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Clive, I don't want to interrupt your extended riff on the theme of councils selling off assets.
But for the record, let me clarify the position on Down Lane Park. There was indeed a consultant's plan to develop on the southern part of the park. But this was proposed as a land swop; an extension to the north of the park to replace the area lost in the south.
I was at the meeting when Cllr Claire Kober met the Friends of Down Lane Park (FDLP) to discuss the issue. It was clear that Claire had been advised there would be no net loss of park area. We said this was not the case. And that was confirmed when Seamus Carey (coordinator of FDLP) and I visited the Planning Office. The discrepancy came from the inclusion of green space proposed inside the new development.
Claire Kober and the council "cabinet" accepted the views of local residents and FDLP and development on the southern end of Down Lane Park is not going ahead. (Athough there's still an expensive and pointless scheme for a Green Link to the so-called Hale Village. (Hopefully, abolition of the LDA and the financial crisis will bury this nonsense.)
I've no objection to the principle of a land swop. The southern part of Down Lane Park was itself added to compensate for loss of land when Lee Valley Technopark was built.
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I don't have any problem per se with the principle of land swops either. Nor did Adolf, who arranged to swop the Sudeten lands for Neville's Peace-in-our-Time.
I think there was rather more inequality and unfairness to the DLP "swap", than simply the 10% smaller size would suggest.
But if it was just a consultant's plan, with little or nothing to do with LBH, then perhaps the Friends of Down Lane Park should be informed, because they seem to think that the council was the driving force.
Have you seen the FDLP website? It seems quite well constructed, even if they may be labouring under the impression that the plan to develop one third of the park was down to the council instead of pesky consultants (its interesting isn't it that the good ideas normally come from the council and the bad ones come from external forces). I wonder what else might be mistaken amongst these links:
Haringey Reneges on Protection of Open Space Policy
Hale Conspiracy
Swap Claim
Previous Swap
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Permalink Reply by HoL Site Admin on
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Have I not avoided the Godwin by not using the H word? ;) The analogy is this: a powerful, overbearing force is trying to persuade us to give up open, public land which we, the people, have paid for. And for what in return? Frankly I think the whole thing is a confidence trick. The consultation, like so many organised by the council, is less than sincere.
There are parallels between what was threatened at Down Lane Park and what is threatened at FP.
As Alan obliquely acknowledges above, it is part of a pattern of asset disposals that has been going on for some years now and I make no apology for highlighting that. What is happening to service to the public? What is the purpose of the council?
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Okay but having made that point can we leave it there and keep this thread on topic.
If you wish to highlight asset disposal by the council in general, please open a new thread.
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Hugh: HoL performs a useful role in publicising council consultations, not least because one sometimes suspects the council is just going through the motions and doesn't necessarily welcome extra attention. Every consultation brings with it the risk that the public will express something other than what the council wants.
I do think it would be a shame if threads about council consultations became a narrow extension of the council's sometimes limited goals and ceased to be citizen-led discussion.
There's already been much discussion in this thread about the detail of this particular proposal. The problem is that if we look at this part-privatisation (and "Consultation") in isolation, that will be playing the council's game, which is not five-a-side football.
The commercial football proposal did not come from nowhere. There are council policies underlying these "partnership" ventures and if the pattern is not seen, we will be tackling each one anew and nobody will learn any lessons.
On opening a new thread (solely) to highlight council asset disposal in general
Thank you for the suggestion, but I think there is a drawback to this. When looked at in isolation and without reference to actual examples, asset disposal becomes a dry and empty accounting subject that is probably less easy for the public to relate to.
I was taken with Alan's quote about the form in which responses are required: if they give you lined paper, write sideways!
We can go on playing the council's game of responding to consultations in the format they require. That will suit them just fine.
The format of these consultations sometimes run along the lines: How many limbs would you like to lose? Select from the following four options (oh and by the way, we've already drawn up the contract to order the guillotine!).
One of the main requirements in law, of an official consultation is that it should be drawn up in the formative stages of a proposal, so that there is a chance genuinely to influence the outcome.
So often, Haringey Council mounts consultations with the public – who they are supposed to serve – as an afterthought, simply in order to be able to say they've consulted.
It is illustrative how far we have come to expecting asset disposals, that Jo Homan (irony defiency Jo?!) took seriously my tongue-in-cheek suggestions about the desirability of total commercial exploitation of our park. The council has moved the agenda so far that these proposals are now normal and the thinking behind them, almost accepted.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I do think it would be a shame if threads about council consultations became a narrow extension of the council's sometimes limited goals and ceased to be citizen-led discussion.
I am with Clive here. Fine sometimes gently keep threads on track but this one is ALL about private control of public land. The consultation over five-a-side football in Finsbury Park is not about car parking or football, those issues are to distract us. In fact I'm going to have to have a lie down, I agree with everything Clive has said in this post. -
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(Actually none o' ya are fer me or agin' me cuz it wasn't me. We have several site admins now folks. All fully trained experts and all doing a great job.)
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Hugh: I accept your Not Guilty plea!
John: I hope you've had your well-deserved lie down; there's no shame in recognizing wisdom ;-)
Anne: the two issues are indeed entangled and difficult to separate:
The best use of the space is a question that (in respect of Metropolitan Open Land) should not be raised necessarily but in effect, it is being raised by the entity that, for better or worse, has overall control of our park (the council). I have no problem with council control of our Metropolitan Open Land (MOL), but I do wish they would behave more responsibly.
It is the steward (LBH) who that has now set this Agenda and nowadays 'best' doesn't mean greatest enjoyment by the public, it means return on assets. But the council has a perverted way of looking at its cost base (this probably is a separate subject), but suffice to say that council interest is sometimes put ahead of public interest and they are not necessarily the same thing.
There may be a better use that does not question the basic ownership, control and benefit of parkland. We, the public, who have paid for our parks should not have to justify its continued use as our MOL.
Council staff have probably been going through all their public property assets and asking themselves, how can we either flog it, lease it, sell bits of it or otherwise raise cash from it? These staff could be the same highly paid "officers" who lost £37m in the Icebanks. This theme started in the 1990s with the plans to sell off branch libraries (and thwarted only by local public protest).
I have a number of ideas as to how the council could save money. But there are much more effective ways of making ends meet than nibbling away at our civic amenities, passing them into private hands in secret deals (i.e. dirt cheap) and reducing our quiet enjoyment. -
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