Outrage over Hackney Council’s plans for yet another car park on Marshes
Caroline Day (left) with fellow campaigner Vicky Sholund at a protest against the construction of an Olympic Delivery Authority private basketball court on a nature reserve in the Lea Marshes in 2012. Photograph: Aoife Moriarty
Campaigners are furious at new plans by Hackney Council to co-opt part of Hackney Marshes for use as a large car park.
The council’s proposal for a 60-space car park with space for five minibuses is the latest in a series of controversial planning applications seen as land grabs by opponents.
Commercial ‘encroachment’ in the Marshes, a prized green lung for sport and nature, has been a long-standing bone of contention, and the irony that some of the area’s best football pitches were engulfed in tarmac by the Olympic Delivery Authority in 2011 was not lost on Sunday League players and remains a source of bitterness.
The Radio 1 Hackney Weekend pop gig on the Marshes in 2012 sparked similar criticism because of damage to cricket and football pitches. Earlier this year the Hackney Citizen revealed the event made no money for the council but cost tens of thousands of pounds in clean up costs.
Now an major new planning application by Leigh Sims, the council’s interim project manager for leisure and green spaces, has appeared on the Town Hall’s website and council-funded publication Hackney Today, outraging lovers of the Marshes, part of a wider natural area known as the Lea Marshes.
Mike Wells, an expert on the Olympics and their impact who runs the Games Monitor website, said: “The Marshes are a precious space where people can go and feel released from the stress of city life. Paving over paradise to put up a parking lot would be a crime.”
Caroline Day from campaign group Save Lea Marshes said: “It is completely unacceptable and outrageous. The council did a survey and the overwhelming majority of people said they wanted the marsh to stay as it was and that they appreciated it as outdoor space for sport and nature.
“I don’t know why the council don’t understand people don’t want more car parks. Not that many people drive to the Marsh. Most walk or cycle.”
A council spokesperson said they could not comment on a live planning application.
Further details of the application can be found in the link to the council’s website here.
Related:
Hackney Weekend pop gig made no money for Marshes upkeep admits council
Olympics expansion on Hackney Marshes ‘stifling’ local sports clubs and ‘vandalising’ land
Judges grant Olympic bosses injunction against Leyton Marsh protestors