Bertie Park is often busy on a Friday afternoon. This video shows the role that Bertie Park plays in our community. If they build on Bertie, many of our young people will have to find somewhere else to play.

The council always says that they want to build on Bertie Park because it has been on the local plan for 20 years. A planning application notice is fixed to a lamp post in the park. This is what it says:

Please click here to comment on the planning application. Click ‘view and comment on applications’. Then search “Bertie” in the keyword search box. Planning consultants CERDA have agreed to help us prepare our objection to the planning application. Click here to help us raise £580 cost for this. £5.00 could make all the difference.

If you have any questions, or know of somebody wants to comment on the planning application on paper, rather than online, please contact savebertie@gmail.com

The planning application is out! The council are asking for comments.

Click here to see the whole site layout, click here for the play area and click here for the nature trail. There are many more documents on the council site.

You will need to give your name, address and email. They will ask you to tick reasons for your comment. Then there is lots of space for a written comment.

To comment, click here.

The council said they will install this sort of MUGA, but this is an error. It will be a metal fence. There will be no goal areas

The plans say the children’s play garden will be a little smaller than the current one. But much of the space is taken up by a slope, a communal seating area, disabled access and a hedge. There will be a 70% reduction in the area for children’s play.

It is still marked as an LAP (Local Area for Play). This means it’s for children aged 0-6 within a 1 minutes’ walk. Instead of 13 items of equipment, a puzzle and a hop scotch for children of all ages, the plans show 4 items plus a set of 7 stepping logs. All for young children.

The total area of grass around the MUGA and play area is tiny. Most of the grassy area is right next to Hinksey stream. There is no fence.

On the land behind Wytham Street, there will be not a wildflower meadow, but a 250m long nature trail. The three seats which would have looked over the meadow will now allow people to sit and look at the housing development.

The council will make a separate planning application for a new bridge.

The council say that they are right now “verifying” the planning application for building on Bertie Park. The final plans will be ready for us to comment on very, very soon. Here’s some of our young people ready for a rough ride!

So, it is a really good time to get together on Bertie Park. Friday 26th May after school. Bring and share if you can. We will be putting on activities. Chat with other members of the Save Bertie campaign. It’s what Bertie Park is all about.

There is a new approach to safeguarding that does not blame parents for the behaviour of their children. It looks at the places where problems can happen: The school corridors, the shops, the stairwells where things can happen out of sight. Oxford County Council recommended watching this video of Carlene Firmen giving a TED talk:

She says that the window between 3.30 and 7.00 is the most vulnerable time for a teenager in this country. We need to make sure that we have safe places for children to play. The parents with young children, the people cycling through and walking their dogs make Bertie Park Recreation Ground a safe place for kids to play.

The new plans show a wildflower meadow has one entrance and will not be seen from the new recreation area. How safe will it be? They show a Local Area for Play designed for 0-6 year olds. Where will the other children play?

Oxford desperately needs social housing, but at what cost? There is a reason why government policy says that you shouldn’t build on recreation grounds unless they are replaced. Building on Bertie Park would have a major impact on the everyday lives of families at this end of the ward. It is only right that they know the facts.

There is a problem when policy is not formed by debate, but decided along party lines. It then becomes necessary to make the facts fit policy, rather than produce policy which fits the facts. The facts become enemies.

We put posters up in the park making the facts clear. Since the start of the survey, they are now being torn down.

We have heard that people have been instructed not to fill in our survey. What are we asking?

Progress is slow, but the response so far is massive. We will obviously share the results of our survey with the council, but we won’t share names and addresses. That’s only reasonable. If the council need, for any reason, to verify our data, we will only share it with an independent agent under our supervision.

Oxford City Council want to replace Bertie Park “like with like as far as the space constraints allow”. The new recreation area will have everything it has now. It will have a play garden, a Multi-Use Games Area and space for free play. But everything will be much, much smaller. There will also be a small wildflower meadow with a path and a couple of benches. This is not safe for unaccompanied children as it can’t be seen from the park. It is more suitable for dog walking or drug dealing.

This video shows just how busy Bertie Park can get :

We asked how many children the new recreation area was designed for. The new play garden is designed for families with children aged 0-6 within a 1-minute walk.

So, where will all the other kids play when they come out of school? We will let you know as soon as we find out.

If the new recreation area can’t cater for all ages, it won’t be a community space.

Oxford City Council has a policy that “existing open space, sports and recreational buildings and land … should not be built on unless the loss resulting from the proposed development would be replaced by equivalent or better provision in terms of quantity and quality in a suitable location”. (Green spaces, biodiversity, and open-air sports)

This is taken word for word from UK government policy. (Government National Planning Policy Framework. Section 99)

Are the new proposals equivalent to or better than our current recreation ground?

The new plans show that there is very little space for anything. The new MUGA (Multi Use Games Area) will be 24m long. This is 4 metres shorter than our current MUGA. It is only marked out for basketball. There are no goal areas! Putting them in would make it even shorter. There will be steps down into the MUGA, and seating on two sides.

The play park is so small that there is only room for 4 items of play equipment. There are benches at one end otherwise the playground would be under the windows of the flats. The playground is no longer flat so there are disabled access paths and shrubbery. We can’t re-use our basket swing as there is just not enough room.

We now have the plans for the Bertie Park Development. You have until the 18th of November to tell Oxford City Council what you think. Click here for the council’s plans and click here for the survey.

One question asks what we would prefer for communal space on site A. Both the MUGA and play area will be smaller than before. This will give us a little strip of grass. Taking down the fence at the edge of the park gives access to the bank of the ditch. This is really steep. How do we want to use this new communal space?

The only space for free play will be on site B:

This will not be visible from the play area and MUGA. The police have said that this is not safe for unaccompanied children. It is difficult to understand why our community no longer deserves a recreation ground. If they build on Bertie, which recreation ground will be next?

Click here for the Save Bertie Web Site