Save the Wildlife Garden at the Natural History Museum

Prospect ('The Union for Professionals'*) has launched a petition to save th wildlife garden at the Natural History Museum in London.

The petition can be found HERE

This was the briefing Prpespect published in August 

As the Natural History Museum’s unique urban wildlife garden celebrates its 20th anniversary it faces seeing more than half of its dozen or so individual habitats lost or uprooted under plans for a multi-million pound revamp of the institution’s grounds.

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Prospect, which represents specialists at the museum, welcomes plans to transform the “sterile” lawn frontage to recreate historic British habitats, including a Jurassic area, which will see the return of the much-loved “Dippy” dinosaur cast.
However, the architect-led plans for the compact one-acre wildlife garden on the west side of the building propose what amounts to a metres-wide driveway arcing right through the middle, where visitors currently enjoy its iconic central pond, associated wetlands and other threatened habitats including heathland and meadow.

Established by scientists

Responding to the plans, Prospect negotiator Mike Weiler said: “The wildlife garden was established by a team of scientists and ecologists 20 years ago, to illustrate the diversity of lowland habitat in the UK, many of which people – especially city dwellers – will never have seen. Many of the life scientists are still very much involved with the garden, which is managed by ecologists and a group of 30 dedicated volunteers.

“The plans that we have seen seem to be all about efficiently channelling large numbers of people through the garden towards the Darwin Centre and the other museum buildings, rather than enhancing the wildlife or encouraging any interaction. They could be easily modified to utilise the existing bricked pathways that run around the perimeter, to minimise disruption.
“In their existing form the plans will see the large pond filled in and replaced with a circular pool.

One small pond will be destroyed while another will remain. The museum’s answer to many of our current concerns seems to be ‘translocation’, to use the technical term – in other words digging up habitats and moving them. The academic literature gives a mixed review at best on the success of this process.

Educational role

“The Wildlife Garden has evolved over two decades. It can’t be replaced overnight. It has taken many years to build up the 2,600 species of plant and animal life that can now be found there and careful management and dedication is required to maintain each distinct habitat.”

The garden was established in part with a £50,000 grant from English Nature (now part of Natural England), the largest ever made by the agency at the time. It is the only area of the grounds that currently nurtures natural history and plays a vital role in both education and research. It attracts thousands of school children annually, many of whom attend museum-led workshops, as well as charting local climate change impacts by recording the annual variations in flowering times of plants.

Despite all this the museum complains of low visitor numbers, though a gate linking the lawn and garden is now permanently locked and the only way to access it is by passing through the busiest parts of the museum building. Even then, there is a complete absence of signage inside the museum.
Journalist Kate Bradbury recently toured the garden and was enchanted. In an article for the Telegraph to mark the garden’s 20th anniversary, she described it as a “Narnia...bursting with adventure.”

Mike Weiler added: “The simple fact is that if the garden was better advertised it would be a magnet for visitors seeking a calm oasis of nature just a stone’s throw from the hustle and bustle of Cromwell Road.”

Embracing positive change

Despite its concerns about the museum’s ill-considered plans, the Prospect branch at the NHM is keen to embrace change for the better and is floating the idea of a raised walkway to attract greater visitor numbers without disrupting the garden.

“Those who run the gardens have always been keen to embrace new ideas and technology to improve the visitor experience. The use of webcams to reveal the secret life of bees, birds and bats has been a recent example of this and there is considerable scope to make use of advances in camera technology,” said Weiler.

A recent “town hall”-style staff meeting at the museum showed high levels of opposition to the current plans and Prospect is now seeking urgent, meaningful talks ahead of any attempt to seek planning permission.

* Declaration of interest. I am a member of Prospect in my role at Brent School Without Walls which provides nature walks for primary children in Fryent Country Park.

Meanwhile Coalition proposals increase risk to abused children claim experts

In all the controversy over Jimmy Savile and Newsnight the media have ignored proposals from the Coalition that, as part of their anti-red tape anti-health and safety agenda and privatisation agenda, could increase risks to children.

In a piece of research for the trade union Prospect LINK Dr Liz Davies, reader in Child Protection at London Metropolitan University and Roger Kline, Social Care spokesman for the Aspect group of Prospect. claim that the Working Together revision documents are 'not fit for purpose'. These documents have been the backbone for child protection work for many years.

In the light of recent revelations and in the current economic climate where there are increased pressures on adults through benefit cuts, low wages and unemployment, children are likely to become more susceptible to abuse and neglect.

Summarising their concerns, Davies, Kline and their co-authors argue:

1. The current proposals to revise Working Together are seriously flawed and dangerous. There are significant, and fundamental misunderstandings of what is required to protect children from harm. We are convinced the proposals will undermine multi-agency and multidisciplinary working. The failure to be sufficiently prescriptive and mandate certain measures will lead not only to confusion and mistakes but will undermine the ability of staff within each agency to prioritise and access resources to support the work of child protection.

2. The proposals appear to be driven by a desire to, ‘cut red tape’ but are undoubtedly part of the Government’s localism agenda. Through deregulation and the privatisation of services the proposals are just one aspect of the rolling back of the Welfare State. No evidence has been provided that such fundamental changes will improve child protection or responses to children in need, or that even the status quo will be maintained. We believe that, in fact, the proposed changes constitute a serious risk to vulnerable children. We strongly recommend that this revision be withdrawn so that a more considered, evidence based discussion can take place about what changes might be needed to Working Together in order to support good practice by the national provision of proportionate and relevant statutory guidance that is fit for purpose.

3. The objectives of the Revision include, ‘to provide the essentials that will enable and encourage good cross-agency working – so that all organisations understand what they should do to provide a coordinated approach to safeguarding’ (DfE 2012). In this submission we argue that, should it be approved as guidance, it will achieve the exact opposite. It is a non-evidence based attempt to drastically reduce the statutory guidance and we believe it will certainly leave the most vulnerable children at risk of harm unprotected as well as risk a reduction in services for those assessed as children in need.

4. The Revision promotes a form of professional dangerousness where children are placed at risk by the actions and omissions of policy makers. For reasons, presumably, of expediency, the guidance appears to have been cut merely to reduce page length and the impact assessments (2012 a&b) are clear that the changes would lead to cost cutting. The Revision sits well with government agendas of privatisation, deregulation and cuts. As the campaign Every Child in Need cites, ‘basic minimum national standards and requirements are essential. A hands-off approach, allowing local authorities to do what they want, when they want, is dangerous. Even the Government’s own impact assessment recognises this – it accepts that, “there is a risk of negative impact on children if central government is less prescriptive (DfE 2012b) That is not a risk we should be taking’ (Every Child in Need Campaign 2012).

5.. These changes come at a time when there is evidence of unprecedented increase in serious crime against children. Child abuse occurs within families and this context provided the focus of the Laming and Munro reviews (2009 and 2011). However, there is a vast international child abuse industry that exploits children and includes trafficking for commercial, domestic and sexual exploitation, online abuse, the illegal adoption trade, the illegal organ trade, forced marriage and the trade in abusive images. These are not marginal issues but are addressed by child protection professionals on a regular basis and yet the Laming and Munro reviews (2009 and 2011) were narrow in focus relating only to abuse within the family. Therefore the Revision, which is based on models of practice recommended in these recent reviews, omits examination of complex joint investigative work required to identify and target perpetrators and protect numbers of children in the context of organised crime. Ironically, the government only recently published an action plan with regard to child sexual exploitation (DfE 2011a) and yet comprehensive, existing Working Together guidance is being discarded (DfES 2009).

With the history of serious child abuse cases in Brent, and indeed deaths of children such children, it is imperative that Brent Council takes on these concerns and ensure that their procedures are effective and go beyond the Coalition's suggestions and urge the London Safeguarding Board to do the same.

 

Department for Education (DfE)(2011a) Tackling child sexual exploitation. Action Plan. London. DfE . Available from: http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/safeguardingchildren/a00200288/tackling-child-sexual-exploitation

Department for Education (2011b) Tim Loughton M.P. response to parliamentary question by Andrea Leadsom M.P. 13th December 086572. Available from; http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/423978/Munro_report_progress_15kb.pdf

Department for Education (DfE) (2012a) Impact assessment. Revision of Working Together to

http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/i/impact%20assessment%20managing%20individual%20cases%20%20%20framework%20for%20assessment.pdf

Department for Education (DfE) (2012b) Impact assessment. Managing individual cases.Framework of Assessment. Available from: http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/i/impact%20assessment%20%20%20working%20together%20to%20safeguard%20children.pdf

Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (2009) Safeguarding children and

young people from sexual exploitation. London. The Stationery Office