Nobody actually wants Oxford City Council to build on Bertie Park. If people support the development, it is because they believe that families deserve homes, and because the Council says that land is in short supply; difficult times mean difficult decisions have to be made.
The council funds social housing by charging a levy on the construction of new homes. This means that they have to construct a large number of houses that people can’t afford in order to fund a small number of homes that they can afford. For this, they need a lot of land. They also need to find ways to make the money go as far as possible. The council doesn’t have to pay anything for land if they already own it, but the inconvenient fact is that this land is likely already to be used. Since the local plan was agreed, 5 more hectares of land have already become available. But this is not cheap land that the council already owns. The plans for Bertie Park go ahead because building on Bertie is not a last resort, but a first resort.
Somehow, the council has to defend the development. The local plan states that planning permission will only be given if Bertie Park is re-provided. They try to argue that building on Bertie will, in fact, improve it. So, a family nature trail is far better than a community green space and a very noisy multi-use games area underneath somebody’s kitchen window is not a recipe for conflict, but means better supervision. They even claim that there will be an increase in biodiversity.
The Council talks about the balance between the rights of our young people to play and their rights to own homes in the future. In a city where private schools have acres of green space available (at a price) for use by the richest children in the world, it is clear that this is not about the land, but the money, and how much we value the places where our children play.
Save Bertie Park Oxford 