London 2012 plans to use land at Blackheath as part of their planning application are unlawful and Greenwich Council do not have the power to even “entertain” the proposal, a local pressure group has claimed.
London 2012 submitted their planning application to Greenwich Council in December and it contained proposals to make use of the Circus Field at Blackheath with a fenced compound to house canteens, horse boxes, stables and training areas. But NOGOE (No to Greenwich Olympic Equestrian Events) claim that two laws dating back to the 19th century will make this impossible.
A retired solicitor, Lionel Lewis, and local historial, Neil Rhind, have carried out research into whether use of the land would be permssable, and claim that enclosure of the land is prohibited generally, and those managing the Heath only have the power to install an enclosure for the “shortest period of time for the purpose only of repair of the grasses”.
The two laws they say will ‘scupper LOCOG’s plans’ are the Metropolitan Commons Act 1866 and the Supplemental Act for Blackheath of 1871
The Metropolitan Commons Act 1866 states:
The Commissioners shall not entertain an application for the inclosure of a metropolitan common under the control and management of a London borough council, or any part thereof; . . . and notwithstanding any proceedings taken under any Act other than this Act, or any provisional order of the Commissioners made but not already confirmed by Act of Parliament, proceedings may be taken under this Act in relation to any metropolitan common.”
Blackheath was then designated as a “metropolitan common” in the Supplemental Act for Blackheath of 1871.
NOGOE’s Coordinator, John Hine commented:
“We are most impressed with the careful research that has been carried out by Lionel and Neil. They have developed what seems to be an unarguable case, which we expect the Council to endorse. We always said that Greenwich Park was too small and since LOCOG are unable to use Circus Field, it should do the decent thing and take the events to a venue which does have the space, but not the fantastic heritage that they wish to destroy at Greenwich.”
A spokesperson for LOCOG told Greenwich.co.uk
“We disagree with what NOGOE/Lionel Lewis says about the use of Blackheath. The legal provisions that NOGOE has pointed to have nothing to do with Greenwich Council’s ability to consider our planning
application. Greenwich Council has confirmed that it will be considering our planning application in the normal wayWe will of course be seeking any necessary consent for the use of the land in due course.
We have gone into a huge amount of detail about in our planning application about all our proposals, and we would not have submitted this if we believed it was not legally sound
We have confirmed that Greenwich Park will not be closed for more than four weeks at Games time and that we will return Greenwich Park to The Royal Parks in the state in which we received it. The use of Blackheath is nothing to do with the claim that Greenwich Park is too small, it is all about operational use and causing less disruption to the Park itself.”
LOCOG, “We have gone into a huge amount of detail about in our planning application about all our proposals”
I have to say, now that I have read most of the Planning Application, that Del Boy Trotter appears to have written most or all of the ecology sections. Heavy on promises to undertake this survey and that but extremely lite on knowledge of relevant EU and UK legislation, and groaningly ignorant about and cavalier towards protected species in the Park.
I can just hear Del saying, “Nah, nah, nah it’ll be alright – it’ll be cushdie – the bats won’t even know we’re there – what stag beetles?”
LOCOG: “We have gone into a huge amount of detail about in our planning application about all our proposals, and we would not have submitted this if we believed it was not legally sound”
Detail????? There is not nearly enough detail in the LOCOG Planning Application regarding trees, wildlife, utility provision, dealing with waste,timings, 2011 test event, closures, legal issues etc.etc.etc… Everyone – go read the Planning Application details on the Greenwich Council website “Applications Nos. 09/2598/F and 09/2599/L GREENWICH PARK & Environs (Olympic Equestrian Events)” and see for yourselves the sorry lack of detail and slipshod research………
There are very many reasons to be concerned about the potential impact of this event. But the prospect of relying on a legal technicality to prevent it going ahead is depressing. The use of Circus Field seems one of the least contentious elements of the proposal and fighting this rather than disputing the genuinely worrying elements appears a bit desperate. After all, every £ and hour spent debating this is a £ and hour taken away from finding a resolution to residents REAL concerns.
Oh and I’m a complete layman when it comes to legal matters, but wouldn’t this same law mean that technically the marathon, fireworks, fun runs, fun fairs and other events that frequent the heath and require varying forms of enclosure should not be allowed? It would certainly be ironic if it turns out that Circus Field now has to be barred from hosting the event that gave it it’s name. But I’m sure the people of Greenwich and Blackheath will thank you when these unacceptable intrusions have been banished from our land.
@Blissett on January 15th, 2010 4:45 pm,
You not comparing like with like. None of those events held on Blackheath is ever enclosed in the sense that LOCOG intends to enclose Circus Fields.
As to the “legal technicality”, some of these laws were brought in to prevent powerful landowners from using their knowledge of state processes and their friends in high places to appropriate public land for their personal benefit, shut out the lumpen proletariat and disenfranchise them. Sometimes called “class robbery”, and all over the country it led to the destruction of whole villages. Read the history of enclosures/inclosures in this country. You should be very grateful for this protection. Without it, there would probably be no such area as Circus Field now, or any part of Blackheath open to the public.
You are of course right that I’m not comparing like with like. But that is kind of my point because using a law intended for the reasons you describe to prevent an Olympic equestrianism event is not comparing like with like either.
The argument being made by NOGOE is that Greenwich Council does not have the power to even “entertain” the proposal. Therefore, they are claiming there is no flexibility in the law whatsoever and no contingency for exceptions to be made. If that is the case, on what basis are those other event allowable? What are these if not exceptions that have been made?
LOCOG spin doctors have been at it again:
LOCOG: “and we would not have submitted this if we believed it was not legally sound” –
The application went in on 30 November. At that time, neither LOCOG nor Greenwich Council was aware of the 1866 law when the news broke on 29 November. Nor were they aware of the 1871 Scheme for Blackheath until the news broke on 13 January. Now they say their lawyers have been working on it (first by Seb Coe on 15 December to a Select Committee and yesterday by Tim Hadaway on BBC London News) for the last month.
LOCOG: “we will return Greenwich Park to The Royal Parks in the state in which we received it.”
Not according to the Environment Statement in the planning app.
LOCOG: “We will of course be seeking any necessary consent for the use of the land in due course”.
You can’t get consent to do something that is unlawful.
The Enclosure Act of 1810 proposed the enclosure of all common land in Lewisham except for Blackheath, and ownership passed to local landowners (and so it was no longer open to ordinary people for recreation, travelling across, etc).
From the official web site of British show jumping (and repeated all over the place),
“the enforcement of the Enclosure Act in the eighteenth century meant that riders had to jump fences to take the shortest route on their journey.”
I think that is a bit fanciful – if somewhere is enclosed, the owner won’t let you jump into it any more than he will let you walk into it.
■PLJAIKJ says LOCOG “spin doctors have been at it again”
NOCOG on the other hand ofcourse wouldnt entertain using spin or spin doctors…
I mean forget the fact that leading light Mr Gold is a spin doctor by trade.
Forget the fact that the park was going to but shut down in its entirety for nine months according to NOGOE.
As for the wider points Blissett has got this spot on.
Jimmy, who is “Mr Gold”?
If you mean Michael Goldman, he is 89 and retired.
Please read for yourselves, people, what LOCOG say in the planning application about Park closures – most of the Park for months and months on end, and I am sure that elf and safety will see to it that the Park will in the event be closed entirely for much of that time.
The Park is too small for the cross-country and the 23,000-seater stadium.
As the scribe of NOGOE’s letter of objection, I now regret failing to make a point on the length of the summer 2012 Park closure, but there were so many objections to be taken, that I felt that a line had to be drawn. However, since the LOCOG spokesman has said unambiguously that “Greenwich Park will not be closed for more than four weeks at Games time”, the assertion needs to be tested.
What is actually said in the Environmental Statement in support of the planning application is that the Park would be “closed to public access for a four-week period from around 7 July to 3 August 201 . . . from around 4 August, large areas of the Park would re-open, subject to security approval, once the jumps and other event facilities have been removed” (Statement para 3.3.7)
There is lot of wiggle room in that promise: “around” a date is not the same as “on” and reopening would be “subject to”. My guess is that LOCOG would be hard pressed to get all the jumps out in three days and that security might well not agree to the reopening of the Park, at least until the Modern Pentathlon athletes have run across the bottom of the Park on 11/12th August, in clear sight of anyone standing in the part to be reopened.
How confident would anyone be at this stage that 4 weeks would truly be no more than 28 days?
May I also clarify NOGOE’s position on entertainment of the planning application, to which
Blisset referred. NOGOE accepts that the Council is able to “entertain” the application in the sense of considering it. However, it has a duty not to allow any part of Blackheath to be enclosed and, after six weeks, neither the Council nor LOCOG have come up with any argument to counter what we believe to be the correct statement of the law
And on partial Park closures (see Jimmy with his spin obsession), a careful read of the Environmental Assessment will reveal that LOCOG intends to fence off a 6 kilometre x 10 metre strip of ground that twists and turns throughout most of the Park from March 2010 for preparation of the cross country track, so no tobogganing for the next two years, no cricket for the next three summers or even a straight walk across the Park. The Assessment also reveals that after the arena has been built in 2011 on he parterre in front of Queen’s House for the Test Event, it will not be restored until after the Games are over. So no activities on the most popular part of the Park for at least two years. All in all, it would perhaps have been better if the Park has been totally closed for 9 months and then returned with no damage to the ecology and without a mark on it.
That brings me to me to the final point, which is that it not true for LOCOG spokesman to say that “we will return Greenwich Park to The Royal Parks in the state in which we received it”. That is the old scrip that was used before the planning application was submitted.
We now know from the Assessment and supporting papers:
• that trees would have been lopped,
• the track of the cross-country course, having been spiked, fed and watered for over 2 years, would be of a wholly different appearance to the rest of the Park grass for many years into the future;
• that as a last resort for archaeology, LOCOG say that “investigation and subsequent ‘preservation by record’ [would be required] where no other mitigation is possible, generally where hitherto unidentified resources are found to be present.” In other words, there are potential archaeological remains not currently known about that might have to be destroyed after some photos have been taken in order to deliver the Games.
• that LOCOG can only hope that the acid grassland that it proposes to dig up would be successfully restored (but not before 2015); it says that a scheme has still to be devised, so it seems that there is no precedent for the proposed procedure
• that LOCOG must similarly hope that the wildlife will not be adversely affected (apart from what it describes as “a limited increased mortality to species attracted to invertebrates [affected by the light pollution from the security lighting], including noteworthy moths and stag beetle”). But it has not carried out a recent survey of the stag beetle population and says that it will conduct bat surveys in 2010 and 2011 (last year’s survey was done at the wrong time of the year).
I could go on, but NOGOE’s letter of objection can be read in full at http://www.nogoe2012.com/downloads/2010-01-13-nogoe-preliminary-statement.pdf
Indigo is talking nonsense. Blackheath is not common – it is manorial waste and was never part of the land embraced by the enclosure acts. The freehold is vested part with the Crown and part with the earls of Dartmouth. But since 1871 has been a protected metropolitan common and, thus , subject to quite rigorous legal control. LOCOG seems not have noticed that when it decided to encroach on the Circus Field without asking first.
Michael Goldman is only 79 – not 89. He looks 59.
Notes to the Commons Bill 2006 brought from the House of Lords on 19 January 2006
“The Norman conquest of 1066 saw the introduction of the manorial system in which common land and rights of common have their probable origins. After the harvests had been gathered in each year from the cultivated land of the manor, the open field strips and hay meadows were made available for common grazing by the animals owned by all those who lived and worked on the manor: these were known as the common fields. In addition, there was usually poorer quality land within the manor which was not cultivated by the lord or his tenants, but might be available for grazing by livestock: this was the ‘waste of the manor’.”
Indigo – it matters not how old Mr Goldman is. Fact remains that he is a PR spin doctor.
So all this nonsense coming from the NOGOE camp that LOCOG is employing spin doctors to distort the facts is laughable when NOGOE’s founder member is himself, yes, a spin doctor.
Jimmy
Check this out. Start to understand spin on another level and wise up.
http://www.sportspromedia.com/deals/_a/nielsen_deal_a_huge_boost_for_london_2012_olympics/
This Locog/Nielsen ‘marketing push’ relationship is the perfect fit for getting favourable and desired results – far from laughable and positively unhealthy for the consenting participants and dangerous for the unfortunate victims.
Whaaaaat – The Nielsen Company is signed up for 15 million US dollars sponsorship of the Games – and LOCOG think it is OK then to use them to conduct market research which found that “80 per cent” of respondents were (allegedly) in favour of having Greenwich Park as the venue for 2012 equestrian events!!!!
Having paid 15 million US dollars to LOCOG for the Games, never in a million years were Nielsen going to admit that people didn’t want equestrian events in the Park.
Greenwich Councillors – are you reading this – especially Dick Quibell.
Jan’s post is I’m afraid yet another example of NOGOE spin…
NOGOErs like Jan welcomed the self selecting unscientific poll carried out by a politician with an agenda against the Olympics – as proof that Greenwich residents don’t want the 2012 Games to take place in Greenwich Park.
Yet NOGOErs like Jan seek to discredit a poll carried out by their opponents that comes up with a completely different set of results as being nothing more than a “marketing push”
Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil anyone?
Is this just another example of NOGOE paranioa, Jan? So they’ve signed a well-known American market research company.
Why is it ‘far from laughable’ and ‘dangerous’? Do you think they’re going to wire up their young victims’ brains? Or are they going to bore people to death when they turn up on your doorstep with clipboards?