When Labour was elected, there was much talk about house building. We asked Anneliese Dodds if the government wanted to build on recreation grounds. This week we had a reply from Angela Rayner (read here). She said her Ministry (MHCLG) currently has no plans to undertake a review of recreation grounds for housing, adding that recreation grounds are “important for the health and well-being of communities.”
Angela Rayner also said that there are no plans to alter government policy (NPPF 103) that states councils should not build on recreation land unless:
We will lose 93% of our space for free play. To “offset” this loss, OCC want to provide alternative recreational provision. Their alternative is improved access to an area of waste land, not visible from Bertie Park. This is what Cllr Hollingsworth said when some-one suggested putting a new MUGA on this waste land:
It’s not “over-looked enough for it to be a secure space for young teenagers. The police said that. Everyone said that. The local council said that. The whole lot. So we said (the MUGA) can’t go there. So, if there is going to be a recreation space there, it’s going to have to be a very different sort of recreational space, not one that’s encouraging children to go … ”
…. Which is the whole point of a recreation space, surely?
Save Bertie Park Oxford 
In a rational world, one would say “unarguable”.
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