Woodhouse Moor

On the 2nd September 2008, at a meeting of Leeds City Council’s Executive Board, in connection with the anti social behaviour taking place on Woodhouse Moor, Councillor Keith Wakefield, the leader of the Labour group, asked Councillor John Procter, who has charge of the Leisure Department, if the council has sufficient resources to enforce the byelaws.  Councillor Procter’s response was, “ No, we don’t have the people, and haven’t for the last 50 years to enforce the byelaws.  That’s the sad reality”.

But then, on the 10th September 2008, it was revealed in a Yorkshire Evening Post article that Councillor Procter’s department spends £119,000 each year providing security at a single leisure centre in east Leeds.  The article said that most of the money goes on providing car park security. Councillor Procter was quoted as saying “The guards protect people’s vehicles to try to persuade them to use the facilities”.

Earlier today I visited that leisure centre.  There were six cars parked in the car park and no sign of any security guards.  The absence of any kind of security presence reminded me of the barbeque consultation and Leeds City Council’s willingness to hand over our council tax to private companies in exchange for empty promises.

The fact that Leeds City Council can waste so much money on car park security shows once again that it considers car parks, tarmac and cars to be more important than parks.

Earlier today, Hilary Benn MP went on a tour of Woodhouse Moor where he saw first hand evidence of the many years of neglect including cracked and missing areas of York stone paving, the unusable tennis courts, and badly rutted paths. He was accompanied by representatives from local community groups who explained to him that :

1. Leeds City Council say there’s no money to maintain the park, and yet :

• Three years ago, they made £170,341 of Parks Renaissance Fund money available for a pay and display car park to be built on the park, money which was spent elsewhere when local people rejected the car park proposal.
• They’ve now made £20,000 available for their scheme to sink 40 concrete blocks into the Moor to create barbeque areas, money which they say can’t be spent to repair the park’s existing facilities.
  

2. The council spends a quarter per hectare on its parks what other major English cities spend on their parks.

3. The council does not produce individual park budgets, so it’s impossible to compare the amount spent on Woodhouse Moor, the city’s most intensively used park, with the amounts spent on other parks.

When Mr Benn was told about the council’s plan to sink 40 concrete blocks into the park to create barbeque areas, he described it as “Bonkers”.

In the photograph above, Mr Benn is shown talking to Amit Roy, whose father is unable to use the park because of the state of the paths. Pictured from left to right in the photo are Sue Buckle from South Headingley Community Association, Martin Staniforth from North Hyde Park Neighbourhood Association, Hilary Benn MP, and Amit Roy from Hyde Park Unity Day.

Moor is not an extension of campus

On the 29 April the Yorkshire Evening Post lead with a scathing editorial on Council proposals to sink concrete blocks onto Woodhouse Moor to accommodate barbecues. Part of the editorial is quoted below, with the kind permission of the editor.

“It is scarcely credible that Leeds City Council has reacted to the spread of illegal barbecues on Woodhouse Moor with plans to sink dozens of concrete slabs into the turf to allow them to continue. The area would consist of 40 slabs, each measuring 60cm by 90cm on which portable barbecues could be used. The idea has left residents and community groups wondering who poses the biggest threat to the moor: those who start barbecues there or council chiefs who would tackle the problem in such a ridiculous way.

“Council bosses would do well to remember that Woodhouse Moor belongs to the City of Leeds and its people – not to those who come to study here for half of the year. And while students are very welcome, contributing as they do to the life and and economy of the city, Woodhouse Moor is not an extension of the university campus.

The YEP’s view is that the council would be far better employed making efforts to ensure that those coming to study in Leeds learn to understand exactly where the campus ends and the rest of the city begins. Click here to read the full article.

If the designated barbeque area ever gets built, it’s going to need a name. The current favourites (which nobody will admit to having suggested) are “The Penny Ewens Designated Barbeque Area” and “The Jamie Matthews Designated Barbeque Area”. We rejected the idea of having a total ban on having a name on the ground that it would be far too costly and difficult to police.

Ten thousand survey forms will be delivered to every household within 800 metres of the park, so that everyone can have a say on which name they prefer. The forms will be delivered by a private company because their quote was so much cheaper than the Royal Mail.  We chose “There’s One Born Every Minute Leaflet Distribution” because they have a website which says “We Won’t Let You Down”.

If you vote for “The Penny Ewens Designated Barbeque Area” please give a very good reason in the box provided.  Otherwise your vote will be disregarded.  Your vote will also be disregarded if you fail to provide an NUS membership number.

The deadline for the return of the survey forms is the 23rd April to be determined.

(photo courtesy of Leap Kye)

Hello Councillor,
I have been a resident of Woodhouse and Hyde Park for nearly 30 years.
I have noticed that recently Leeds City Council have been increasingly treating Woodhouse Moor and the adjacent land as though it is their private property and making important decisions that affect the local residents without bothering to consult them. Most of these decisions seem to be aimed at pleasing the transient student population with disregard to the wishes of the permanent tax-paying citizens, and (in my opinion) are somewhat short-sighted.
If you build permanent barbecue sites on the Moor you not only legitimise barbecues but actually encourage them. Rather like building bigger and more roads inevitably just attracts more vehicles, building a mere 40 sites will only encourage hundreds more into setting up destructive fire pits. The difference is; You’ve just invited them.
As I understand it, around Twenty thousand pounds has been allocated for this proposal.
Why not use that money towards employing a Park Keeper to oversee the Moor, liase with Police, and enforce the bylaws?
Woodhouse Moor is fine as it is, it doesn’t need irreversable changes which seem to me to be shortsighted attempts at making a political mark (however well meant) rather than properly considered and debated decisions.
Please Consider or Reconsider this proposal very carefully, and take into account the opinions of long-term local residents like myself who think this is a bad idea.
Yours Sincerely
Si Denbigh
Woodhouse & Hyde Park

We were advised that 10,000 questionnaires would be delivered to households within 800m of Woodhouse Moor. I live within that perimeter, it is now 15/04/09, and I am still waiting, as are most of my neighbours. I know of precisely 1 who has received it. Something is up. Options follow:

1. Council Officers lied (which I do not wish to think.)
2. There has been a massive administrative bungle (wholly believable.)
3. The private company retained to do the delivery has dumped most of the stuff and run off chuckling with the money (also wholly believable, and it wants looking into.)
   

In any case, this presumably renders the Consultation null and void.

(photo courtesy of net_efekt)

“It is interesting to compare and contrast the current council “consultation” on Woodhouse Moor with a previous council “consultation” in Kirkstall in 2006 on the future of the Kirkstall Mills. Both operations apparently had the same purpose, which was to solicit public support for something that the council’s officers had already decided to do. Neither exercise followed the clearly defined rules for a local planning consultation, which to my mind is the obvious model to adopt. The barbecue “consultation” uses different techniques (to the Kirkstall consultation) to achieve a similar gerrymandered result. Once again there is no effective check on the ballot papers and some of the information circulated by the council is misleading or wrong. In contrast to Kirkstall, which had a very tight closing date, the barbecue version seems an indeterminate exercise. Cynics might consider that the distribution has been delayed to avoid the university vacations and increase the likelihood of the desired outcome. An undemocratic choice of question has been used to prematurely close down the debate.

“It is good to see the flame of democracy burning bright ! Leeds City Council should give lessons to Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong-il. I cannot see the justification for perverse consultation techniques, when there is a perfectly good model available which has stood the test of time. A traditional planning consultation under the “Compact for Leeds” would last for 12 weeks, and would be open to anybody who submitted a written response which included their name and address. There would be no artificial boundaries and the consultation would be open to anybody with sufficient motivation to write. All the responses would come from named individuals and be available for others to read. This is less about drumming up votes and more about reasoned discussion and public debate”.

(published by kind permission of John Illingworth)