Woodhouse Moor Online

THE PLEA THAT FELL ON DEAF EARS

September 27, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

On the 21st August, the Yorkshire Evening Post published the following last minute plea from local community associations for the council to abandon its plan to create a barbeque area on Woodhouse Moor :

It is now over 5 months since Leeds City Council launched its plan to concrete part of Woodhouse Moor to create a barbeque area. This would install 40 large concrete blocks in the Moor at a cost of £20,000 and scrap the byelaw banning fires in a section of the park right next to the children’s playground and nearest people’s homes.

We are grateful to the YEP for its fair and balanced airing of the issues. However we now understand that the Council is about to announce its decision. We understand many YEP readers must wonder what all the fuss is about.

It’s very simple really. We love our park.

Woodhouse Moor, the city’s first public park, is a gift that one generation passes onto another. As the community most deprived of greenspace in Leeds we need a way to share this space with everyone. The Moor should be safe for dog walkers, joggers, picnickers, allotment holders, team sports, wildlife and young mums with a push-chair. It should not be an area where the selfish minority hold sway.

The scale of the vandalism we have witnessed both this summer and last is ruining the park for everyone. The litter, destroyed benches and picnic tables, bonfires, branch ripping, allotment raiding, drug taking, smashed glass, burned metal, noise, graffiti and tons and tons of dumped rubbish are not sustainable.

We have no confidence in the Council’s consultation exercise which has been a farce and fraud from the beginning.

We therefore ask the Council at the eleventh hour to safeguard this green treasure for all and not to appease vandalism with £20,000 of concrete and a turned blind eye.

As we now know, the community’s plea fell on deaf ears. I suppose it was too much to hope that the council would drop the plan now after going to the trouble of (1) excluding the community from the multi-agency meeting that gave rise to the plan, (2) changing the city’s byelaws to make barbeque areas possible, and (3) organising a biased consultation – all apparently so the plan could go ahead.

BERNARD ATHA’S ADDRESS TO THE FULL COUNCIL

September 16, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

When the full council met this afternoon, Councillor Bernard Atha gave the following address setting out his views on the council’s plan to establish a designated barbeque area on Woodhouse Moor :

There is immense opposition from the local community to barbeques on Woodhouse Moor. This is the fourth major attack on the Moor by the Lib Dems. When they first came into power, they tried to turn part of Woodhouse Moor into a car park for the university. Then they wanted to make a large part of it into soccer pitches for the university. Then they were wanting to widen the A660 at the point where it crosses the Moor, the widest stretch of the road between the city centre and West Park. The fourth major attack is barbeques. It’s important to protect the Moor, and so let’s not allow them to take away a piece of the park like a burglar.

They say they’re allowing just one area for barbeques. But this will have no effect unless it’s policed. If they can’t police the existing byelaw banning barbeques, how will they do it when it’s restricted to a small area ? We’re told it’s not going to be concrete. Have they found grass that doesn’t burn ? Where is it going to be ? How will it be demarcated ?

The police have said that they’ll cooperate if we enforce the bylaws. Well then, let’s enforce the byelaws. Only a handful of prosecutions in the courts would be necessary .

Woodhouse Moor is valuable. It’s sacred to some people. Let’s do away with barbeques on it, enforce the byelaws and it will all be sorted out by next year.

BROCKWELL PARK – THE ORIGINAL LIB DEM DRINKING DEN

September 6, 2009 Bill Comments 7 comments

When Councillor Penny Ewens heard that the Lib Dems in Lambeth had a drinking den on Brockwell Park, she decided that she would like Hyde Park and Woodhouse to have one too. So, on the 4th April 2006, she announced that it would be necessary to establish a “drinking den” (to use her own words) in the ward for drinkers who would be displaced from Hanover and Woodhouse Squares as a result of the DPPO that was proposed for the two squares. At the same time, she mentioned that a drinking den had already been established in Lambeth. She didn’t say where it was proposed to locate the drinking den. However, a few days later, a local resident asked two PCSOs if they knew where the den was to be located. One of them replied “Woodhouse Moor, but the final decision is up to Penny”. Then, in a report presented to a meeting of the council’s Inner North West Area Committee on the 21st September 2006, the council’s area management team said :

Once the proposed DPPO is in place, the Moor may well attract street drinkers who have been displaced. The view of the Neighbourhood Policing Team is that the Moor is large enough for street drinkers to not cause a nuisance and regular patrols to the area would keep an eye on the situation.

At the same meeting, Inspector Richard Coldwell said he strongly supported the council’s plan to establish a drinking den on the Moor, and described a similar scheme in Brockwell Park in Lambeth where he said street alcoholics are encouraged to keep to a particular area of the park, screened from the rest of the park by bushes which they use as a toilet, and that having them in one place makes it easier for police and social workers to keep an eye on them – a “multi-agency success story”, he said.

We understand that a meeting took place on the Moor, and it was decided that the best location for the den would be in the corner of the park where Wellington’s statue is located. Residents wrote to the to the YEP to protest and emailed councillors with the result that the scheme appears to have been dropped – for the time being.

THE PRESENT-DAY SMOKE-FILLED LUNGS OF LEEDS

September 6, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

The problem of smoke pollution on the Moor began about six years ago with the advent of the disposable barbeque. These are shallow aluminium trays covered with a metal grille and which contain charcoal. They can usually be purchased for less that £2. Although charcoal is supposed to be a smokeless fuel, the charcoal used in disposable barbeques gives off prodigious amounts of smoke.

A study carried out by the French environmental group Robin des Bois found that a two hour barbeque produces 220,000 times as many cancer causing dioxins as a single cigarette and seven times as many dioxins as an incinerator at the point of discharge. In addition to dioxins, barbeques release hydrocarbons (which contribute to global warming), sulphur dioxide (which contributes to acid rain) and particulates (soot, which contributes to global dimming and vitamin D deficiency in cities at northern latitudes).

On a warm day in late Spring and early Summer, there can be over a hundred barbeques on the Moor belching out smoke and fumes for several hours. In May 2008, the amount of smoke being produced on the Moor meant that residents of neighbouring properties had to keep their windows shut. Kathleen Mason wrote recently to the Yorkshire Evening Post to express the concerns felt by many local residents about the hazard posed to their health by the high level of smoke pollution on the Moor.

THE LUNGS OF LEEDS

September 6, 2009 Bill Comments 4 comments

The reason we have the Moor today is because of the public spirited people who back in the 1850s fought to acquire it for the people. What on earth would they think if they knew how their precious Moor is being used today. Here are clues from the pages of the Leeds Mercury, beginning with an extract from an article that was written on the 23rd June 1855 :

“Woodhouse Moor, ‘the lungs of Leeds,’ is the people’s park, and almost the only open space within the borough where our citizens can assemble for recreation in the open air. It has from time immemorial been the favourite resort of our working classes on all holiday occasions, and there they have year after year, while enjoying innocent pastime, gathered fresh strength from the pure air they inhaled.”

Shortly afterwards, at a public meeting, the Revd W Sinclair said :

“All they asked was only that they should be permitted to enjoy without interruption their Noble Moor, where they could breathe the pure air, and where no doubt they were enjoying invigorating games, and adding greatly to their manly health.”

Following the meeting, the Leeds Mercury wrote :

“It is our “People’s Park,” and of late years, as the heart of the town has become more thickly populated, the moor has been increasingly the resort of the inhabitants, – thousands of whom now daily visit it to breathe its free air, and escape the denser atmosphere surrounding their hemmed-in homes.”

And later that year, the Mercury wrote :

“There can hardly be two opinions as to the value of a place like Woodhouse Moor to such a town as Leeds. We all of us require now and then, after confinement to our desks and factories, a place within easy distance, which we can reach without expense, where we may walk or run, or play at cricket, and clear our brains and invigorate our bodies by wholesome exercise in the fresh air. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” and we no know place where Jack can so healthfully and innocently disport himself as on the Moor. The beautiful view which it commands, – the ample space it affords for manly exercises, – and the breezes sweeping over it from the north and west, make it a most desirable place for public recreation.”

LAMBETH COUNCILLOR RUTH LING ON HOW LAMBETH DEALT WITH A SIMILAR PROBLEM ON CLAPHAM COMMON

August 29, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Commenting on the decision by Lib Dem and Conservative councillors on Leeds City Council’s Exective Board to ignore the wishes of local residents and proceed with a scheme to create barbque areas on Woodhouse Moor, Lambeth councillor Ruth Ling explains how two years ago, Lambeth Council dealt with a similar problem on Clapham Common:

“This decision is a great shame, and very short-sighted. Barbecues do a great deal of harm to the park (or Moor) where they are lit, create a very unpleasant smoky atmosphere for other park users and invariably lead to bones and other food waste being left lying around, which attract rats.

“Although I grew up in Leeds (Ash Grove, Hyde Park), went to school in Headingley, and used to walk across Woodhouse Moor every day to Jacob Kramer Art College and later to my job at Leeds Playhouse, sadly I have been exiled in London for many years. For the past 15 years, I have been a councillor for Clapham Common, where we successfully banned barbecues a couple of years ago without any fuss. I have never received one complaint from anyone unhappy about the decision, nor have I ever heard from any resident of any incidence of the bye-laws being flouted (and we have some extremely active and vocal local amenity groups including the Clapham Society, Friends of Clapham Common and the Clapham Common Management Advisory Committee). Admittedly, we have park rangers to enforce the ban (though the Common is more than three times larger than Woodhouse Moor, at 88 hectares) but I think the real enforcement comes in the £500 fine, which is hefty enough to act as a deterrent.

“For the large Council estates facing onto and close by the Common, this lovely green space is their front garden, and it is always packed on sunny days. Yet people seem happy to take picnics with them, and to eat cold food — there is no need to eat hot food on a warm day! And I think the thousands of people who pack on to the Common on sunny days really appreciate not being smoked out by the few.

“I really hope that Leeds City Council reconsiders its decision and that the Moor is left barbecue-free for the greater enjoyment of the majority. But please sort out the litter problem! Every time I visit my old stamping grounds (as I will this weekend for Carnival), I am shocked at the mess on the Moor. Good luck.”

If only we had a councillor like Ruth here.

THE CANNON DESTROYER

August 15, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

The above is a painting by the Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky (1817 – 1900). It’s a representation of the Battle of Sinop where on the 30th November 1853, Russian warships destroyed Ottoman naval vessels anchored off the northern Turkish port of Sinop. This was the event which triggered the Crimean War, a war with which our area has connections in the form of street names such as Raglan Road and Cathcart Street, named after Crimean War commanders, and Cannon Walk on Woodhouse Moor, named after the two Russian cannon that were placed on the Moor in 1857. The guns were subsequently removed during the Second World War to be melted down as part of the war effort. In his Yorkshire Diary column two weeks ago, Yorkshire Evening Post columnist Neil Hudson recalled Reginald Rivers’ story of how he used to play on the cannon as a child and later had the sad task of feeding the smashed remains of the cannon into the furnace at Greenwood and Batley’s on Armley Road.

A CALL FOR STRONG LEADERSHIP

August 9, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

The leader of the Labour group is calling for Leeds City Council to take action against those who damage the park through their anti social behaviour. In a letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post, Councillor Wakefield says that the council’s proposal to legalise barbeques sends out the wrong message. The council is effectively saying to potential lawbreakers that Leeds City Council will reward them by changing the law to make their activities legal. Councillor Wakefield is calling for there to be strong leadership on the issue of barbeques, and for the existing byelaws to be enforced.

A CALL FROM THE YEP FOR £500 FINES

August 9, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

In a Yorkshire Evening Post editorial, the newspaper has said that the damage being caused by barbeques to the Moor cannot be tolerated any longer. The paper is calling for £500 fines to be imposed on people who have barbeques on the Moor in the same way that people in Lambeth are fined if they have a barbeque in one of the parks down there. Apparently, Lambeth no longer has a barbeque problem in its parks as a result of adopting this policy. The YEP editorial says that the Lambeth approach to the problem is supported by former Labour councillor Gerry Harper. In a separate article in the same edition of the newspaper, Mr Harper says that if it works in Lambeth, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work here.

MORE LETTERS ABOUT THE BARBEQUE PROPOSAL

August 9, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

There have been several more letters complaining about the barbeque consultation. On the 28th July, there was a letter from Robin Melia and Shirley Graham giving numerous reasons why barbeques are a bad idea on the Moor and pointing out that the park is for everyone, and not just the selfish minority who abuse it. Robin and Shirley make clear in their letter that neither they nor anyone they know received a consultation form. Stanley Lewis had a letter published on the 3rd August charging the council with a lack of respect for residents and pointing out that it’s not just the byelaws that they’re not enforcing – they’re not enforcing the DPPO either. Then on the 6th August, there were letters from Mel Rose and Keith Wakefield. Mel was asking for some clear thinking on this issue and pointing out we already have a solution to the problem – the existing byelaws. Councillor Wakefield in his letter calls for strong leadership and enforcement of the byelaws.