Please attend Islington’s second meeting on the future of our park
The second of two project information sessions regarding Islington’s plans to effectively transform Wray Crescent Park into a cricket pitch takes place on June 15 at 7pm.
We want to urge all park users to attend this meeting.
At present, we are not at all impressed by these plans, which appear to favor the needs of one small set of users (Sports England claims just 1,682 people in Islington play cricket) above the needs of the 14,000+ people who live in this ward.
Islington carried out a need assessment for the category, ‘cricket pitches’ in 2018, but we have no evidence it has conducted a specific needs assessment for our park, and for the local needs of our park.
We suspect the plan fails to respect the UK government’s 25-year environmental plan, which notes the need to create local public spaces and green infrastructure that supports a wide range of activities.
We also do not see how the current plan respects the need to ensure urban green spaces are equitably distributed and accessible, including to children, the elderly, and those with mental health conditions and of disadvantaged backgrounds.
We do not understand why the need of under 2,000 people should be seen as more important than those of 14,000. We believe other cricket facilities are available and note local grounds also exist in Alexandria Palace, Crouch End, Hackney Marshes, Hampstead Heath and elsewhere.
But for 14,000 residents in a densely populated part of London that we believe has less green space per head than anywhere else in the UK, this is our most valuable park.
We remain concerned this plan will prove irreversible if it goes ahead and will act to the detriment of the community and thousands of local residents who rely on this valuable space for so many activities.
We had no substantial answer to questions concerning community involvement, revenue sharing models or anything else at last week’s meeting, which causes us to cast many doubts on the extent to which this plan as is reflects — or tries to reflect — community need.
Please join the meeting tomorrow night at 7pm using the link below:
Time: Jun 15, 2021 07:00pm, London
Meeting ID: 810 9559 4964
Passcode: v8DVb5
Photo by Shalev Cohen on Unsplash