User forum January 2013

User forum January 29, 2013.

All quiet on the Wetlands Front

Filter Beds and Walthamstow Marshes User Forum, Tuesday January 29, 2013, 6.30pm-8.40pm.

The forum has become rather like the Battle of the Somme. Meaningless options get shifted slightly as one side or the other gains a few yards of ground. But no one remembers why the ground was fought over or what possible advantage it could be to anyone to occupy it.

The forum has now met four times to discuss what to do with a tiny amount of money paid to LVRPA by the Olympic Delivery Authority for the use of part of Porters Field. The first meeting took the form of a walk about and happened on September 19, 2012. To say that a great deal has changed since then (at least in the plans) would be a gross exaggeration. And there is to be yet another meeting by which time LVRPA will have been able to draw up more detailed proposals.

LVRPA's levy is about £12m. In addition it earns sizeable revenue for things like ticket sales and rents. The total amount of money the user forum will have spent six months discussing by the time the process ends, is about £72k. This is considerably less than half a per cent of LVRPA's annual budget and we were told it might take 18 months to spend the money (though strangely the 18 months only lasted until March 2014, now less than 15 months away).

The shopping list was something like (the exact details aren't really all that important since all the items could resurface in some form at the next meeting):--

Young Rangers Group for perhaps 30 pre-teens with a dozen sessions	Estimated £3.5k
Outreach to teenagers perhaps as part of Duke of Edinburgh award	Estimated £3k
Special interest events (like the bat walks LVRPA run anyway)	Estimated £2.5k
Open events: Examples; Lammas Harvest Day, Dog Agility Day, Community Picnic	REJECTED (Estimated £20k)
New ranger (for 12 months) to do surveys and support the programme	Estimated £30k
Seeding, hedging and tree planing on Leyton Marsh.	Estimated £8k
Wildflower planting	REJECTED (Estimated £750)
Digging a wet area	Estimated £500
Enlarging the ice rink car park to create a different main entrance to the marshes.	REJECTED (Estimated £7k)
Cleaning up and taming the area around the Ox Bow. and the bit of Sandy Path closest to the ice rink	REJECTED (Estimated £20k)
Screening of ice rink (unfortunately the Porters Field side and not the Lea Bridge Road frontage)	Estimated £4k
Art project at the Cattle Creep and the Sustrans Lea Bridge Road underpass.	Estimated £6k
Improving the footpath between the Sustrans and the Boardwalk. This is going to be challenging. This is a picture of the area during a reasonably wet winter.	Estimated £3k
Signs: no LVRPA shopping list would be complete without signs	REJECTED (Estimated £10k)

One of the most interesting things we discovered was that Martin Page, LVRPA greenspace manager, is personally of the view that the boardwalk is an expensive waste of time, since people who want to walk there can wear boots. A very sensible viewpoint, but wouldn't it be ironic if Walthamstow Wetlands created some new boardwalks (as is proposed) while LVRPA was grubbing up its boardwalk!

Jonathan Brind