Barnet Council scheme to destroy Pavilion Way playing fields must be stopped
As the London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden I have submitted my objections to the Council’s scheme to expropriate Pavilion Way fields for a free school. (For full objection click here.)
Pavilion Way fields have been deliberately neglected by the Council so that they could have a self fulfilling prophesy of disuse enabling them to build on this vital green space.
There is not another full size pitch in the neighbourhood, and local children have themselves done their best to clear the land to enable them to use the field and all weather surface, which , contrary to what the council claim , is used for football games and training by them.
The Council also made it impossible for anyone else to bring the fields back into use, by refusing to give a sufficiently long lease to enable local people to access the grants that are available to bring sports facilities like these up to scratch.
The Council have turned their backs on local children who need somewhere to play, so they can build one of their free schools- yet the planning application itself says the need for places is in Colindale and West Hendon, not Burnt Oak. The Council should have insisted on a suitable school site there as part of the huge developments going on in those wards, instead of taking away Burnt Oak’s paying field.
It is inevitable that there will also be a huge increase in traffic congestion as a result in Deansbrook Road, which is nose to tail at busy times already.
The Council’s vindictive approach to local children will cause traffic chaos as well as a loss of facilities for the children of Burnt Oak and must therefore be resisted as hard as we can.
