Highgate’s Liberal Democrat councillors have voiced their fierce objections to renewed plans by a developer to build houses on a controversial former park on the Archway Road. The Lib Dems instead want the Labour run authority to make up for its past blunders with the site, and pursue a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the land, to create a valued and well maintained park for local people in the Archway area.

The ‘pocket park,’ at the junction with Southwood Avenue has been a long standing source of grievance between local residents and the council. Its run down state has a sorry history of Haringey Council mismanagement, say Lib Dem councillors. Since their election last May, the Lib Dems have supported local people in getting the council to serve an order for the site to be cleaned up by the owner, and have pushed at a full council meeting for the Tree Replacement Order agreed early in 2002 to be served on the owner requiring that the trees he felled on the land are replaced.

Highgate Lib Dem councillor Neil Williams comments:

“If the pocket park were restored, we would have a highly visible green area along this very busy urban road. It would be a vital green lung for the Archway Road. Our preferred option is a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the site, and this must be pursued with vigour. Whatever happens, the present application must not be allowed to succeed, and other avenues must be pursued.”

Lib Dem Parliamentary spokesperson Lynne Featherstone, who has lent her support to the objection, adds:

“We will fight this application, as this space must be returned to the public – who should never have been deprived of it in the first place. Giving in because of past planning blunders is all too common in Haringey – and it is totally wrong.”

Background:

This site will be well known to all familiar with the Archway Road and is one of at least two former pocket parks in the Archway Road that, incredibly, the council failed to respond to the Department of Transport when the DoT offered them back to the council following its abandoning of Archway Rd widening scheme. The parks therefore ended up in a public auction, and were bought very cheaply by a developer. There was a previous application for a house on this site which was refused. The site is a mess. Seven mature trees have been felled, the stumps of several of which are still there and sprouting in summer. The council has failed in its duty to prosecute on this, not doing so over the four years permitted for action, despite requests from the Tree Trust and many other organisations, and despite pictures run in one of local papers.