Walker Cricket Ground update

So I have had a further look at the Walker Cricket Club plans.

First the good news:
1. Car park B near Mayfield Avenue residents has been reduced, with the mini-roundabout turn circle removed.
2. The building has been shrunk both vertically and horizontally.
3. The existing car park next to the tennis courts has a new landscape feature added in the centre of the car park.

And now the bad news:
1. Extra parking has been tacked on the Waterfall road end, compensating for the reduction at the Mayfield avenue end.
2. The facilities for cricketers are pitiful. They do not even have dedicated toilets for each changing room. Competitive teams do not have any means of changing, storing equipment, using a bathroom and having team meetings separately from each other.
3. The squash club have to use the same changing rooms as the cricketers so you would have great difficulty in hosting a cricket tournament while allowing the squash residents to continue to play.
4. The area given over to the Health club is simply enormous in comparison.

The bottom line is that we have a trustee group who are contemplating replacing a cricket club with an enormous health club on the grounds with a minor nod to its cricket roots by way of appeasement and I am deeply concerned by this.

As I mentioned before, on structural grounds I believe it fair to say that they have made some good progress in answering our initial concerns, but we are still left with a health club.

If they had provided plans showing a new building offering superb cricket, soccer, hockey and squash facilities, together with family restaurant, viewing rooms, conference rooms etc. then I for one would be a lot happier as I would view the plans as a demonstration of the trustees commitment to promote the grounds. What I see here is an attempt to gain revenue with minimal effort by leasing off a section of the grounds to a health club operator and no genuine signs of a commitment to the grounds themselves.

For this reason I remain against the plans, but whether the council planning office can take these concerns into account I am unsure. I will write back on this shortly.

New Plans for the Walker Cricket Club

Copies of the revised Walker Cricket Club are now in circulation. If you are interested in seeing them, drop me an email and I’ll get in contact with you. After a quick spin through it is apparent that they have knocked off the top level of the building, re-designed the roof to a more traditional sloping affair and reduced the overall dimensions of the structure. So they would argue that they have “significantly” reduced the structures impact to the surrounding area.

However there are a number of outstanding caveats:
1. The increase of parking spaces remains onerous and implies anticipation of significant traffic
2. With the exception of a changing room area (marked male & female), there are still no specific features designed for cricketers. They have labelled a bar area the “cricket bar” but, as I say, that is just a label. One example of what’s missing is that there are no storage facilities for cricket gear, which means that it remains true to say that cricketers will have less facilities than they currently suffer in the proposed plans. Ironic considering this is supposed to be a cricket ground.
3. The overwhelming focus of the building remains a drive to create fitness/health club, complete with swimming pool, treatment rooms, fitness centre and gymnasium areas. Nice as this is, I still cannot believe they will get the traffic required to turn a profit in an area awash with similar centres and it still leaves the future viability of the grounds themselves uncertain as revenue generation is switched to internal activities.

As was the case in the original plans, my opposition is not against the decision to build the structure, as it is their land, the original building is an eyesore and the cricket and squash facilities are crying out for better facilities.

My objection is that the plans propose a development whose prime sources of revenue generation are from internal fitness activities at the expense of sports – such as cricket – that utilise the grounds. Cricket will become ever more marginalised by the march of step aerobic classes etc. and the grounds will continue their steady decline to the point where their value to property developers will become increasingly attractive to the Walker trustees.

Whether the council planning office has the ability to consider the proposed business activities and their relevance to the Trusts responsibilities for the grounds or not is an important point to discover, because on purely structural terms the trustees have indeed “listened” to our objections.

I will be doing some more research on this matter and will report back as soon as I hear anything. In the meantime if anyone has any comments to make, feel free to use the comments link below this piece or send me an email and I’ll get back to you asap.

New Site Search Engine

So I have managed to include a Site Search engine. You can see the little bugger at the top of the left hand margin, courtesy of Pico Search. At the moment it's kind of irrelevent but over time this could be pretty useful. More features will follow.

Mayfield Avenue Bottle Bank

At the 7th Jan Southgate Forum Helen and I chatted to Terry Smith after the meeting and gave him a drawing (beautifully done by myself ;-)) of the proposed site for a bottle bank at the bottom of Mayfield Avenue, which is on the grass verge that currently has five trees on it, behind which is a car park. This bank is purportedly to serve the residents of Pruden Close, who currently place their rubbish bins at the sheds at the bottom of Pruden Close road. So the issues are:

1. Why are they placing a bottle bank at the bottom of Mayfield Avenue to serve Pruden Close instead of placing it in the area that Pruden Close residents currently use for their waste?
2. Why if they MUST place it at the top of Pruden Close do they not position it in the corner of the Car park there, rather than demolish three trees and tarmac over a perfectly decent piece of greenery?

Since this meeting Terry called me to say that he has been in talks with the Housing section that is handling this and has confirmed the following:
1. The "bottle bank" will actually be a small recycling unit
2. It is for the residents of Pruden Close, NOT for the general public
3. Pruden Close residents will have a chance to vote for whether they want this or not, if apathy rules or the vote is negative it will not happen
4. The council cannot place the unit where the dustbins are right now as it is already difficult for lorries to get down there
5. If the recycle unit is to be built the likelyhood is that they will place it in the car park, BEHIND the tree outcrop.
6. If for whatever reason they decide they MUST place it on the tree outcrop they have made an assurance to Terry Smith that NO trees will be chopped down.

So thats it for now. The story is not over but it is getting clearer.

Notes from 7th Jan Bowes, Southgate & Southgate Green Forum

Attending were all the usual suspects, including our friend local councillor Terry Smith, with Edward Smith presiding as Chairman and what a smooth operator he is too.

First up was the North Circular road extension, which while not relevant to us directly is nevertheless revealing in highlighting the impotence of local councils in the face of central decision-making. The council wants to widen it. Ken says no money is available. Stalemate.

Broomfield house is another perfect example, where Enfield Council are reduced to praying that we would win a TV restoration competition to get the required funds. We didn’t and so Broomfield is left to continue its steady decay.

With regards to the Walker Cricket Ground planning application, apparently no plans have been submitted so the Council has not had the opportunity to say “no way in hell” as yet. Why the plans have not been submitted is another question entirely that was not addressed. This story still has legs.

A member of the audience raised the issue of cars using the bus lane around the tube station as a shortcut into Chase Side, which at best alarms pedestrians who aren’t expecting a 4x4 to come hurtling at them as they cross the lane to reach a bus and at worst has the potential for something a lot more serious.

A person from London Underground marketing department who acted like a startled rabbit caught in the gaze of a disbelieving crowd, assured everyone that this was of equal concern to the LU, which was why CCTV was in operation there and they would continue to liase with the Police. This is when the conversation got interesting as it was pointed out that no CCTV’s were actually there. The blame was then switched to the Police who quickly batted the issue back to the LU claiming they were in favour of CCTV’s but the LU refused to place them on nearby buildings. The issue finally was parked at the door of the Heritage association who apparently were upset about CCTV cameras being installed on the buildings. Having established who to blame everyone seemed quite satisfied until they realised that the original question had not been answered. Mr E.Smith therefore stepped in and assured everyone he would “look into it”.

A member of the Police stepped up to talk us through the recent campaign they had “secretly” been performing in our area. Over a three-month period they had drafted in a significant number of beat police with the remit to stop anyone that looked suspicious, particularly targeting Southgate College. In the first three days of the operation they stopped 500 people and made 15 arrests. This steadily petered out, which could either be a result of a sea change in attitude amongst the criminal fraternity or the realisation that it was probably better to lie low for a while, only time will tell. An equivalent operation was also successfully concluded around Arnos Grove.

The issue of course is that just as we are getting used to the surprising and welcoming site of bobbies on the beat the operation ends and we revert back to the distant wailing of police sirens as the nearest sign of a police presence in our area. In my opinion we need a greater presence on our streets, be they police, volunteers, traffic police or security guards, we need a zero tolerance attitude to crime and a more creative approach to punishment, such as the graffiti artist being forced to clean his work and guard it from other wannabe artists. I would be very interested to hear people’s views on this.

Next up was a speech from the prospective local Tory candidate Winchmore Hill councillor David Burrowes concerning the forthcoming new central library to be placed in the heart of Enfield Town and very spiffy it looked to. We even get a museum of local history, which I am trying really hard to get excited about.

The important point promised however was that the creation of this new library does not endanger local libraries in any way and in fact is regarded as complimenting local services. This point was raised and confirmed on a number of occasions so it looks like our local library is safe.

The one dark cloud is that the research section currently tucked away in the Palmers Green library (and apparently hidden from view) will be switched to the new library. And the cost of this shiny new library? A cool £5.8M, but don’t tell any Broomfield house lobbyists as its cruel to deliberately upset people.

This brings us to the next subject which was proposed Council budget for the next financial year. The Chief Financial Director presented this, once he had managed to get into the locked building by throwing stones at the window to grab our attention; a perfect demonstration of council organisational efficiency if ever I saw one.

Anyway the bottom line is that he hasn’t got enough money and what he has got he has sliced and diced as best he can to ensure we do not slide into 3rd world status but instead tread water comfortably in a sea of mediocrity for the next year.

He also launched a succinct tirade on the Council tax structure, warning us that houses are due to be re-valued in 2007 and in the absence of any structural change of the tax we will all be financially crippled at that time. He feels the tax is regressive, unfair, arbitrary and biased towards supporting the North at the expense of the South and who am I to disagree? Having Enfield re-defined as being part of East London has also not helped matters as this change also resulted in a loss of grants to the Borough.

What to replace the Council tax with though is an ongoing discussion and I note that since this meeting I have seen a number of press reports that indicates the political parties are waking up to this time bomb. A local income tax is one option gaining ground, switching the tax from the property to the person, who pays more or less dependent on his income. Is that a poll tax I see before me, dressed up all nice and shiny?

We shall see, the bottom line is that surely it is unfair for a family on modest income to be crippled with a whacking great council tax bill purely because the housing market has taken leave of its senses and decided to value their house at a squillion pounds.

They can’t enjoy this lottery windfall without losing the roof over their heads so the value is completely ephemeral to them, unlike the council tax bill that lands with a thud on their threadbare doormat. I think we shall see and hear a lot more of this subject as the months slips by.

Thats all for now folks.

Maiden Post

Well, this is the maiden post for Blagdens Lane Neighborhood Watch, welcome! My name is Anthony Newstead and I am currently helping the cause of the Blagdens Lane Neighbourhood Watch group.

For those of you who have inadvertantly stumbled across this site and are wondering where the hell Blagdens Lane is, it is in Southgate, near the green, which is in the borough of Enfield in North London, UK. I'll be using this site to comment on local issues, share information etc., a Mr Angry/Concerned of North London if you will.

This is all rather new for me so for now I'll say goodbye. However - and sad as it may be for some - , in the words of Arnie, "I'll be back".