LETTER: In praise of Adventure Playgrounds

 

 Dear Editor

 

Children spend 6 months of the year in school, and if you include holidays and weekends, 6 months of the year NOT in school. Places like these WERE Stonebridge, Church End, Roundwood, and South Kilburn Adventure Playgrounds where children had the opportunity to play outside doing all the things they love to do, but cannot do at school or at home. 

They enabled children and young people from different ages, schools, abilities, backgrounds, and postcodes to come together in a spirit of challenge, adventure, managed risk, learning through experience, creative expression, and low-key safe supervision.

 

Brent closed them all down as part of their ‘austerity measures to save money’. 

 

But what was the real cost of these closures? Where do the children play?

 

In August 1982 the local paper ‘The Willesden and Brent Chronicle’ published a front-page article entitled ‘Under 5s living in Sky prisons’ ‘A shocking report released last week shows that despite Brent Council’s policy of housing families with children in flats below the fifth floor, a quarter of the under ten-year-olds on South Kilburn and Stonebridge Estates live above that level.’

 

Well at least they had a policy back then even if they didn’t stick to it! What is the policy now? As more and more high-rise blocks are crammed into every corner of the Borough’s available open-space, and patches of land, where now demolished community facilities once stood…where do the children play? If you live in a high rise, or even a low-rise do you let your children out to play somewhere within your locality where you feel they are safe when out of sight? Or is it now a world where children don’t play outside any more, just stay indoors when not at school, and play on their PlayStations and Xboxes?

 

We keep a Facebook page for all the past-users of Stonebridge who remember their childhoods there so here are a couple of comments from there;

 

“Some of my best childhood memories were spent at the playcentre with my sister and friends/ neighbours (names deleted) The playcentre shaped our lives and made us the people we are today. There was and will never be another place like it.

 

I Loved making wax candles, and wax hand moulds. The chips after school from the tuck shop the inflatable in the square pit, The rope swing, the wooden tower/climbing frame that I never got to the top of, because all the older kids owned it the firework displays. The children of today can only dream of a childhood like the one that the staff provided us with. 

 

Thank you all, for everything you did for us growing up x “

 

“Spread the word, the kids need somewhere to go other than the street corner or their bedroom. Just like we did and had.”

 

“We had so much fun going there every day in school holidays. I used to look forward to the trips. I’ll never forget it”

 

“Omg my kids loved it there and so did I.”

 

 Glynis Lee

Brent Council has destroyed Stonebridge Adventure Playground but not the spirit that made it unique

The remains last night

This morning

Stonebridge Adventure Playground is no more.

A place and staff that made all the difference to so many young people in Stonebridge and Harlesden has now been demolished by Brent Council in an action which is so short-sighted as to defy logic and certainly against the professed values of the Labour Party.

The destruction included the demolition of £700,000 play equiment funded by the National Lottery.

The playground Facebook site is beginning to get reactions to the demolition. Glynis Lee wrote:

STONEBRIDGE ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND....as the bulldozers roll in to raise it to the ground...after many years of love, play, freedom, friendship, kindness, creativity, and above all FAMILY...because everyone who came through those gates became a part of the Adventure Playground family.....even those ********* who are now demolishing it .....Time alone will tell.....

And others followed

• Glynis Lee We are sad, but Stonebridge lives on in the lives of everyone who has used this beautiful place...the people destroying it should feel shame, but probably don't...

  
  
• Joseph Daniel How they sleep at night springs to mind but at least Team Stonebridge Adventure Playground created a Legacy and put our youths on the right path. Manners Discipline Peace and Love.
• Glynis Lee Spot on Mr Daniel....Stonebridge has spread all over the world now....thats a great thing...so much positivity to come from such a small place...'cos you guys came through tougher times, learned all those important things... Manners Discipline Peace an...See More

  
  
• Karin Giles You done a great job xx

  
  
• Ro Rosenkranz It should be the topic of a bbc documentary

  
  
• DjTterry Bee Where is the public rage that took place for the Carlton Tavern pub in Kilburn when the developers demolished it? Where is the outcry, the multiple news bulletins on London tonight? Features in the evening standard? Why are children from urban sink estates not regarded as much to warrant a dedicated free space with decent adult supervision to be nurtured into adulthood? Why does everything have to be about commerce? Brent council, WILL eventually see the fallout from their corporate greed, you all know what they say about idle hands!

  
  
• Dorota Staniak They even continue the job Sunday morning!!! Its looks like they want to hide what they doing

This is what Brent Council has destroyed:

Brent Council finds request for information on the Stonebridge Playground betrayal 'extremely burdensome'

As we have heard this week the Government wants to get rid of the Freedom of Information Act, although they haven't quite said it so bluntly.

As far as Brent Council is concerned is seems they have already adopted their own Obfuscation of Information Act.

Glynis Lee, puzzled over the sudden change of policy by Brent Council in Summer 2014 - at a first meeting Brent Council officers informed the Brent Play Association that the Stonebridge Adventure Playground was to be rebuilt, with a new building and perhaps slightly less land but then, at the next meeting, told them they would be closed.  An excited architect named Fred Eastman of South Stuio Architects had shown them his plans for the Playground at the first meeting.

At the same time Brent Council decided to end funding for the Playground.  Their own consultation report later admitted that 80% of consultation respondents wanted to keep the playground, but this was followed by Cllr Ruth Moher stating at a Cabinet meeting that 'you can get anyone to sign a petition'.

Wanting to unravel all this Glynis had put in a Freedom of Information request that the Council refused to answer. She then asked for a review and this was the response.

Note the promised reply by  12th May 2015.  In fact it did not come until July 8th and had been apparently arbitrarily changed from an FoI request to an Environmental Information Regulations request.

This is Fiona Alderman's reply:

--> Dear Ms. Lee

Thank you for your request for a review received on 13 April 2015.

Your information request
Environmental Information Regulations 2004

I refer to your request received on 13 April 2015 for a review of the
council’s decision to refuse your request for information relating, in
broad terms, to the Stonebridge Park redevelopment from 16 September 2013
to date. Please accept my apologises for the delay in conducting the
review.

As part of my review I have considered your original request for
information received on 9 March 2015 which was in the following terms:

“All correspondence, reports, minutes, letters and proposals which relate
to the redevelopment of Stonebridge, the expansion of Stonebridge primary
school, the removal of the Welsh School and the closure of Stonebridge
Adventure Playground. This information would be with specific reference to
all of the above between the Brent’s Asset management department, Children
and Young people department, and department of Regeneration and growth.
Information including reports and plans from South Studio Architects to
also be included, and all communication between council officers, and
councillors which pertains to any or all of the above”.

I have also considered the council’s response to your request dated 8
April 2015.

The response stated that your request is being handled under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information
Regulations 2004 (EIR) and that with one exception your request was
refused because it exceeded the statutory cost limit of £450 (or 18 hours)
as set out in section 12 of FOIA.

The response referred to the diffuse nature of your request, its breadth,
the shear volume of the potential information that might be in scope, the
hundreds of officers across the council and other individuals who may hold
the information you have requested, the difficulties in determining with a
reasonable degree of certainty the information the council actually holds
and the council officers and other individuals who actually hold it (i.e.
the difficulty in locating the information) and the inordinate amount of
time and the excessive and wholly disproportionate amount of resource and
money complying with your request (including retrieving and extracting the
relevant information) would demand.

I also note that you were invited to narrow or refine the scope of your
request.

A link, however, was included in the response for ease of accessing the
report to Cabinet on the council’s re-development proposals for
Stonebridge Park which is a public document and was already published on
the council’s website.

Against that background, I now set out the outcome of my review.

As your request was for information relating to redevelopment proposals,
it constituted ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of EIR.
According to EIR, environmental information includes any information on,
amongst other things, the state of land and plans and activities affecting
or likely to affect the state of land. Your request therefore should have
been considered under EIR and not FOIA and, as a consequence, the refusal
of your request did not comply with the requirements of EIR.

Under EIR, the council can refuse to disclose environmental information if
an exception applies and, in all the circumstances of the case, the public
interest in maintaining the exception outweighs the public interest in
disclosing the information. There is, however, a presumption in favour of
disclosure. Although, unlike FOIA, EIR do not contain an express
cost-limit, the council can refuse to disclose information to the extent
that the request is “manifestly unreasonable”. Further, according to FOI
case law, the costs of compliance can be taken into account under both
regimes.

In all the circumstances, I am satisfied that it is necessary to refuse
your request to protect the resources of the council from being squandered
on disproportionate use of EIR. I am also satisfied that there is no
adequate or proper justification for your request and that it is not aimed
at the disclosure of important information which ought to be made publicly
available.

In this regard, I note in particular that key decisions about the
Stonebridge Park redevelopment proposals have been made by councillors in
open and public meetings and that important information, such as Cabinet
reports and associated documents, are already freely available. Also of
particular note is the extensive and widely advertised consultation that
was undertaken to seek the views of residents and other local stakeholders
about the redevelopment proposals which included creating a website
setting out consultation information with an on-line response portal and
face to face consultation events. The consultation also received
considerable local press coverage.

Finally, as the redevelopment proposals have education, planning and
procurement implications, the attendant statutory controls bearing upon
the council ensure that its decision making is open and transparent and
that there are opportunities for public participation and for the council
to be held to account.

As the availability of the manifestly unreasonable exception is subject to
the public interest test, I have also considered the benefits of
disclosure. The disclosure of yet further information would be in the
interests of openness and transparency. Providing access to information
can assist in holding public authorities to account and encourage greater
public participation in the exercise by public authorities of their public
functions.

On the facts of this case, however, I have no doubt that for the reasons
given in the previous refusal of your request and the reasons I have
given, the public interest in disclosing the information you have
requested is outweighed by the public interest in withholding the
information. In deciding how much value there would be in attempting to
comply with your request I have also had regard to the fact that at least
some (if not most) of the information is likely to fall within available
exceptions under EIR which the council could and would rely upon to
justify a refusal of your request.

Thus, for all the reasons I have summarised in this decision notice, as
your request is extremely burdensome and costly, would require an
unreasonable diversion of finite resources from the provision of valuable
services and is of no public value, it is in my opinion manifestly
unreasonable.

Hence, although your request should have been dealt with under EIR, and
not FOIA, to all intents and purposes, very similar considerations apply
and the outcome is the same.




In conclusion, therefore, I have upheld your complaint in part because it
was dealt with under FOIA, and refused under section 14 of that Act, and
not under EIR. Ultimately, however, I have upheld the decision to refuse
your request because it is manifestly unreasonable and the public interest
favours withholding the disclosure of the information.

If you are not content with the outcome of my review, you have the right
to complain directly to the Information Commissioner. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at:

The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow,



Glynis would appreciate a translation of the above into English so that she can inform the children of Stonebridge, badly missing their playground as the summer holidays begin, of the Council's position. Can anyone help?

Incidentally the School expansion document going before the Cabinet on Monday notes (regarding the Stonebridge Day Centre currently hosuing Stonebridge Primary classes) and the Preston Library site:

It should be noted that of the above sites, the former Preston Road Library and the former Stonebridge Day Centre are both included in the Capital Disposals Programme for 2016/17 with forecast receipts of £700k and £1.5m respectively estimated for Quarter 4.

 

Pain and anger as news of Stonebridge Adventure Playground closure spreads

Audley Harrison and children fight for the playground

Following Brent Council's vote to close Stonebridge Adventure Playgroubnd after nearly 40 years of serving generations of children in one of London's poorest areas comments are pouring into the playground's Facebook page:

One of the most galling aspects of the campaign is the contempt that councillors have shown to campaigners not hesitating to lie when it suits them:

Stonebridge child gives Labour Council leaders some home truths

Outsdie Brent Civic Centre last night

One of the children from Stonebridge Adventure Playground surprised workers who had accompanied her to last night’s Consultation event at the Civic Centre. They said what happened ‘made the whole event worthwhile’.

The girl had been scribbling away on one of the comments cards that had been distributed and onlookers assumed she was doodling out of sheer boredom.  But then she took the microphone  and gave an impassioned speech from her notes.  She mentioned the hardship that would be caused to single and working parents, and how the closure of the Adventure Playground  would mean there was nowhere for the community to mix, people would just stay in their flats and not let their children go out. She also mentioned CCTV cameras which she said aren¹t as necessary when young people have somewhere to go.  

The councillors responded that at an earlier meeting the users of the Millennium Centre had spoken up for their centre in a similar way (thereby apparently implying it was pointless trying to argue from a human perspective) 

Doug Lee from the Playground spoke about the six months that kids aren't at school, the length of time the playground has been in operation and the money Brent Play Association has raised on behalf of other groups in Brent (supplementary schools, CVS, Pakistani Workers Association to name just three) 

Glynis Lee said that the council were saying 20% cuts to front-line services but Stonebridge Adventure Playground  was getting a 100% cut. The cuts were going to decimate front-line services, whilst councillors sat in their glass tower taking a 20% rise and people in Brent were suffering.
Although Jo Coburn from BBC Politics, who chaired yesterday’s meetings for a fee of £2,500, wanted to get into the subject of where the cuts should be made, Glynis was having none of it.

She told the councillors they were elected by the people of Brent as Labour councillors and were doing the work of the Coalition. She asked, ‘how do you guys sleep at night?' 

Deputy Leader Cllr Michael Pavey said they did have trouble sleeping but to not go ahead with these measures would be breaking the law and they weren't prepared to do that.  

The Youth Parliament representatives also mentioned the increase in councillors' allowance and Butt responded they wanted to attract the best councillors and not just retired people or those with enough funds to do it.

People in the room also asked about proposals to work with the voluntary sector to continue to provide services in some way, and Anne O'Neil from Brent Mencap pointed out that the procurement process would hinder this unless it was vastly improved. 

An important question was raised from the floor about the use  of  Section 106 money for communities affected by redevelopment. Cllr Butt answered this, unsatisfactorily according to some, implying  that these funds just went into the general pot, and not to the respective communities.