Residents appeal to save Twyford Sports Ground space
Tomorrow’s deadline for the public consultation on Ealing Council’s Local Development Framework has one residents’ association scrambling to get the public to oppose it. The Creffield Road Residents’ Association (CARA) are appealing to its members and the wider Acton community to stop Ealing Council from developing four acres of land at Twyford Sports Ground. An open letter to all members was sent out ahead of the Tuesday deadline for public comment on the LDF consultation.
The document for Acton can be found on Ealing Council’s website.
The following letter was sent out by CARA.
Dear CARA members
Twyford Avenue Sports Ground Under Threat - CARA's Response to Ealing Council's LDF Proposals
As you may be aware, the developers who own a 4 acre section at the east side of Twyford Sports Ground have been discussing with the Council a possible outline planning application for the site. This topic has been so important to us that for some years now we have had a separate steering group dedicated to the Sports Ground, reporting to the CARA executive committee. At the moment, the site is designated as Community Open Space and therefore inappropriate for development; although this does not guarantee it will not be developed, it is meant to be protected by a document called SPD 6. However the Council is also going through the process of updating its long-term development strategy called the Local Development Framework, and in the latest proposals of this LDF a number of protections that would make development of the site more difficult have been suddenly and significantly weakened despite CARA's representations for over a decade.
CARA has always been suspicious that Ealing Council would do something like this. On one hand they reassure us that the ground is protected from development, but now we see all the previous statements of protection apart from just one - the supposedly rock-solid SPD 6 - are gone. A cynic would say it looks like the Council have always had a hidden agenda - hidden from CARA, at any rate, though clearly not hidden from the developers - and I have a healthy amount of cynicism.
www.caraealing.org
November 29, 2010
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