Postby atbattersea » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:55 am
I don't really like Lucy Mangan to start off with, and she has made a real pig's ear of the facts here, but the underlying point she is making is correct: the parks are being privatised.
The story of the adventure playground is this: for many years there was a very good, free, adventure playground in Battersea Park. Adjacent to it was a more junior level playground for younger children, and next to that was the One O'clock club for the under fives. Several years ago Wandsworth Council proposed that they should charge an entry fee for the adventure playground - because they had staff on site, and had to maintain it. This led to many protests from the local community (so whatever anyone else here thinks, people in the locality made it known that they thought that a free adventure playground was correct).
Wandsworth Council then announced that they would tear down the old adventure playground and build a new, more junior (and less demanding) facility. This would also lead to the redundancy of the adventure playground staff (who incidentally monitored faults in the junior playground too).
This led to yet more protests, and even an occupation of the adventure playground. But, Wandsworth Council pressed ahead and demolished the old adventure playground. As anyone who has had any dealings with the Council should know, it generally does what it likes, following the "money" argument, regardless of local objections.
However, the promise at the time was a new adventure playground, aimed at a younger audience. This was to be completed in three stages: the first we had (notice I wrote "had", rather than "have"), the second was rather vague, but involved developing the other land on the adventure playground site with more facilities, and the third stage was a lovely tree-top walkway. The inference seemed to be, because Wandsworth Council did not want to pay staff (ie the old adventure playground had been demolished with this justification), all of these facilities would be free.
So, the first stage of the new adventure playground was built. Contemporaneously with this the One O'clock club was shut down. Fairly shortly thereafter it was announced that GoApe would be building a commercial tree-top walkway. Part of this development would mean taking down the free zip wire in the adventure playground and relocating it.
Er, hold on, we seem to have moved on to stage three, which has now been commercialised, forgotten about stage two and partially dismantled stage one. Now, a couple of years later, we have no space for the stage two development, probably no space for the zip wire to be relocated (it is certainly not currently in place) and the One O'clock club has been turned into a cafe and crazy golf site. So, overall, Lucy Mangan is correct in that there has been substantial privatisation of these public play facilities in Battersea Park.
There is also the issue of the small football pitch/basketball court in the adventure playground, which may be inaccessible (haven't really checked since GoApe opened).
With the removal of the adventure playground staff the number of faults in the junior playground immediately rose, with some components being out of action for extended periods.
As to GoApe itself - I do feel a little uncomfortable having kids running about above my head while I'm sitting around watching my son playing. And I do wonder whether the financial outlay they have made can actually be recouped, and what happens if it cannot. This is a new sort of facility for them, very different to their other sites.
