LVRPA changes

From Katy Andrews:

Please would everyone also note that the LVRPA are going to be voting to change their status from a publicly accountable body to a provident society on the 27th February, and have already got the required three Trustees.

The Authority have today voted in favour of making yet another cut to the amount of precept to be collected from the London Boroughs - equitable perhaps for those in south and west London, but ominous in terms of turning what was meant to be a public asset in the form of England's first Regional Park into a privately-owned and unaccountable business venture.  

The move was oppposed by Labour and LibDem members, but the Conservatives have an inbuilt majority on the Authority.  In fact, the Regional Park's administrators seem to have wanted to keep the precept as it was in the last financial year (itself effectively a cut, due to the rate of inflation), but an amendment by the Tories saw the amount of the precept cut by 2%.  

It is to be presumed that the probable resulting shortfall in funds may entail the selling off of various assets owned by the Regional Park Authority, and (worryingly) yet more pressure on them to develop the green open spaces that they are supposedly entrusted under the 1967 Parliamentary Act to ensure are protected from development.