Walkabout in the Lea Valley

Hi everyone, hope that you have five minutes or so to sit down and read some detail!!

Introduction and context
Please see below the notes made of a walkabout meeting last Saturday between several of our members, friends from Save Lea Marshes and Cllr Chris Kennedy who is the Hackney rep on the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) board. Cllr Paul Douglas who is the Waltham Forest rep on LVRPA had agreed to come to the walkabout but didn't turn up and sent no message. Later we heard that he had a diary malfunction.

As you may remember, the Waterworks Nature Reserve Visitor Centre is a complex off the south side of Lea Bridge Road on Lammas Road next to the Italian furniture showroom. It belongs to the LVRPA but they have deliberately run it down over the past few years in order, many suspect, to offer it up for sale to housing developers. Although there were 5,000 signatories to a petition against such development and although it is designated 'Asset of Community Value', the shocking headline from our meeting with Cllr Kennedy is that he supports the demolition of the building and car park in favour of a housing block with just a section of it available as an education centre for the Nature Reserve. Here are the notes:

Notes of walkabout

1. People from Waltham Forest and Hackney met Cllr Chris Kennedy (Hackney Council member rep on the LVRPA) at the Waterworks Nature Reserve Visitor Centre on Saturday 9th June 2018 with a view to finding out the LVRPA's position vis-a-vis the Centre and surrounding land, and to lobby the Cllr about the need to retain Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) status in this location and to resist urbanisation.
2. Cllr Paul Douglas (Waltham Forest member rep on the LVRPA) had agreed to attend the walkabout but did not attend.
3. Cllr Kennedy said that he favoured new building of combined housing with a nature reserve educational centre in the Waterworks Centre current location. Such development he explained would finance the building of the enlarged Ice Centre by the LVRPA, a project that has been on hold since at least 2010 but is becoming urgent due to the Ice Centre's technological obsolescence. He felt that housing along Lea Bridge Road was acceptable as a development. But he said he would always argue for the retention of the open green space to the south of the Visitor Centre (the former golf course) and the land to the north of the Ice Centre.
4. Arguments put forward to Cllr Kennedy included:

• the Visitor Centre was built with public funding in 2002 supported by a range of public partnerships, so there is no case for demolishing it in favour of housing development.
• given the fact that the LVRPA have run down its Visitor Centre, the PPLBS have suggested that the building could be protected from development and retained for use as a much-needed community facility for the new residents of 97 LB Road and LB Station Sites estates
• the LVRPA could borrow money to develop its Ice Centre as it would be of international status and would be income-generating.
• the Lea Valley is potentially being considered as a UNESCO site and could become a National Park, so nothing should be done to detract from that in the meantime.
• Lea Bridge Road should not suffer further building development as this would fracture the green corridor long part of the overall LVRPA aims and purpose, and each new bit built on would add to the encroachment on the next.
• MOL status should be retained in that location as it forms a protection for the Nature Reserve - a buffer between it and the railway & warehouses/factories. It is needed even more now with the creeping developments in Lea Bridge Road.
• It is not good policy to deliberately build housing next to industrial units (Fairways Business Park) as future residents may well object to the activities being carried on there and this could lead to industries moving out and jobs being lost.
• new occupants of a small housing unit might join together and force the sale of the freehold by the LVRPA to them.
• the completion of the 3 x towers of 97 Lea Bridge Rd and the proposed additional 2 x towers of Lea Bridge Station Sites will create visual barriers to the Marshes for residents of Leyton, whereas WF Council's public relations ploy was 'to open up the Marshes'.

 5. Later the group inspected the notices put up by the LVRPA about the temporary closure of footpaths due to the provision of a camp site for an annual event. Cllr Kennedy and others raised the issue with the LVRPA last year, but while the closures this year are disappointingly the same as last year some people noted that the LVRPA had at least responded to the complaints made last year about the lack of signage and authorisation.

6. It was suggested that the Walkabout might be held regularly, perhaps quarterly, in which case a date in September would be sought for the next one. Invitations might be sent to local Ward cllrs.

I will also post a summary of this on Facebook.

Note we are still waiting for responses from Cllr Miller, Mark Adams and Ana Lopez to our Peoples Plan and associated questions.

Claire