Original plans for Barnard Park now scrapped

• WE are all used to politicians bending the truth to justify their own mistakes, but Councillor Claudia Webbe’s explanation of why Islington Council withdrew its application for Barnard Park at the 11th hour before it came under scrutiny at a public inquiry surely takes the biscuit (The Town Hall scraps seven-a-side pitch plans for Barnard Park, October 13).

The application was withdrawn not, as Cllr Webbe would have us believe, because she wanted to spare us the delay of an inquiry, but rather because she had obviously been told by her legal team that they didn’t have a hope of defending it in an open hearing.

The plan was so deeply flawed, right from the farcical “consultation” process through to the lack of legal notices put up to tell people a planning application had even been submitted, that it would have been laughed out of court.

The council was warned years in advance that its plan was in contravention of its own core planning policies, as well as going against the advice of Sport England and other national advisory bodies, but it didn’t listen and ploughed on regardless.

The real question is why did it get this far and why has so much public money been wasted (approaching £500,000 to date) while all the time the pitch falls into further ruin? There can only be one answer.

The council allowed itself to be bullied into getting rid of the pitch by a vociferous lobby group of people with neighbouring properties, and was blinkered to all other interest groups and voices of reason.

In any commercial organisation such a fiasco would result in sackings and a full internal inquiry but, being the council, it will no doubt attempt to brush it off and explain it away, as Cllr Webbe did last week.

But make no mistake: this episode is a shocking reflection on the workings of the council and makes the recent scrapping of its “smart” benches (again defended by Cllr Webbe) seem like a minor incompetence.

Lets’s hope, at long last, the council now sits down with all those who have a stake in the future of the park and actually listens to everyone, not just those with the loudest voices and sharpest elbows.

FRED REYNOLDS, N1