Apparently the Director of Redbridge Leisure, Culture and Olympics received an email yesterday saying that Fairlop Waters Country Park had won £400,000 and asking for the Council’s Bank details. Unfortunately he took it to be one of those scammy spam emails and deleted it. Have no fear, the techies have retrieved it and it’s genuine. See the City Hall website.This is just in time, because we have Jacqueline Eggleston, the Fairlop Waters Project Manager, coming to speak at our next Coffee Morning and she can tell us what its going to be spent on and why the car park for the disabled on the north shore of the lake has been dug up. One of our members is pretty upset about that.
Thursday 19th March
10am – 12 noon
Hainault Room
Fullwell Cross Library
All welcome - Fair Trade tea, coffee and biscuits.
Let's hope the money comes with sufficient strings attached to ensure that it is spent directly for the intended purpose, and is not substantially eaten up in "consultancy fees" or "officer costs".
ReplyDeletePlease pass on thanks to all your members/friends etc who answered the call to vote for this money coming to Redbridge - it seems fitting that Jacqueline is coming to speak to you soon and I suspect that she will be floating on air.
ReplyDeleteJacqueline has spent many many hours putting this bid together - she was a pivot to drive the support for it through and everyone responded!
I shall now come down from the ceiling - and be assured that I will do everything I can so that residents continue to have an input into what this money is used for!
Best regards
Vanessa
Thanks Vanessa - one of the few cabinet (currently!) voices that can be relied on to stick by her word and deliver. Roll on Tuesday week!!
ReplyDeletePress Release:
ReplyDeleteRedbridge swings the vote to transform Fairlop Country Park
Redbridge residents together with the Council have been successful in securing £400,000 for Fairlop Waters Country Park after winning the Mayor of London's Priority Parks vote.
Redbridge Council launched a campaign in November 2008 to encourage local residents, businesses and schools to back the bid for a total of £400,000 funding from Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, to improve Fairlop Waters Country Park.
And residents responded by voting in their thousands online, via text messages and through the post to help swing the vote, lodging 3799 votes in total.
Pupil power also helped swing the vote after John Bramston Primary School pupils led the way by forming a human red cross at Fairlop Waters Country Park to show that X certainly does mark the spot.
Over 600 hand-written, personally illustrated postcards by pupils from seven Redbridge primary schools were also presented to Roger Evans, London Assembly Member for Havering and Redbridge at Boris Johnson's offices.
Cllr Linda Huggett,Cabinet Member for Leisure, Culture and the Olympics, said, "This is absolutely fantastic news and, on behalf of the Council, I would like to thank everyone responsible in helping us to secure this much-needed additional funding; including our hard working parks staff and, of course, everyone who voted for us.
"We shall now progress our plans to transform the park and create the improvements our residents have been asking for. We want to make all of our parks and open spaces among the very best to be found anywhere in the capital."
The money will now be used at Fairlop Waters to develop the venue into a state-of-the-art attraction offering a mix of sports and leisure facilities, including sailing and climbing, as well as improving footpaths and cycle ways, creating welcoming entrances and landscaping and protecting its amazing wildlife.
Congratulations to Redbridge, Fairlop, and all residents, (I voted for this), I hope that the money will be wisely spent, and not used to fund the running costs of this great park.
ReplyDeleteIn This Scrutiny Report there is mention on page 13 paragraph 5.4 about the sailing centre no longer being fit for purpose, and goes on to state...
" for these reasons it may be beneficial to move the operation to the west end of the lake"
This is a one off opportunity to totally update these facilities, and transform this venue into a leading sailing centre, and competition standard fishing lake.
Congratualtions Redbridge.
Newbie
Congratulations Fairlop Waters,lets not forget how the Mayor found this money - by slashing the advertising budget, Radbridges spend on advertising 2007/8 was £2.06 million
ReplyDeleteA prize for the first to guess how many Parks that would do!
dopeyf
Couldn't they buy several Jags for a year's cost of Redbridge Lies?
ReplyDeletedear all
ReplyDeletea quick personal thank you to you for all your proactive help in getting people to vote, as you can see from press release above, we were informed this morning that we were successful in getting the £400,000. This will help us to get that bit further with our plans. (we didnt get the £2million, but we only had a very outside chance of that so not too disappointed!) As you have probably seen, work has commenced on site and im afraid it all looks a bit rough before it gets better. We are about to put in a planning application for the next stages which we will start in October ( after ecology works) but by the summer I hope to have some new signage and walking routes marked out with accompanying leaflets. Im just re-jigging the budget now to see what we can afford to do in the longer term - lots more funding bids in but it looks like we will need to save some money for the building works too..... More updates to follow at the various april committees and of course at agenda 21 this month
with best wishes and thanks again ( please pass on my thanks to everyone else who helped)
PS. disabled access is temporary blip - but all in the efforts of creating a properly accessible walk all around the lake by april, so hope i can persuade your member to grit their teeth a bit longer and see the long term gain!....
Oh, I think you will find morw than One member of this group is peed off about the disabled parking.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is so typical of the traditional Redbridge Council incompetence yet again.
I'm not surprised anymore, just tired of watching it happen...again...and again...and again.
An excellent result! I am sure the efforts of bloggers like yourselves helped to raise awareness, and the vote. As did the postcards written by children at William Torbitt school and delivered to City Hall a couple of weeks ago. I'm really looking forward to seeing improvements in the park.
ReplyDeleteAnd the picture looks familiar - are those the contents of my wallet?
Roger it can't be, there are none of the old white fivers; and we all know your wallet's fatter than that.
ReplyDeleteMorris,
ReplyDeleteI nicked that photo from Roger's blog some time back, so I think they may have literally been "the contents of his wallet" at that time.
Great news indeed. My grandson, aged eight, was one of the William Torbitt School pupils who enjoyed drawing a card which was sent off to the Mayor. Congratulations to Mrs Pat Hinds, the new Head Teacher at the Torbitt, and her staff for this imaginative idea and for involving the children in such an innovative way.
ReplyDeleteHaving met Jacqueline and heard her speak at the AHDA AGM, I have every confidence in her ability to see that the money we have received is used wisely. Like many others, I find staff at Redbridge Council often incompetent - but Jacqueline is an exception and I wish her luck. The fact that the Director thought the email was spam and deleted it does not surprise me in the least. eed I say more?
Whilst I am writing may I add a good word for Couuncillor Mrs Vanessa Cole? There is Lady who speaks her mind and is not afraid to stand up and be counted. Well done Vanessa. Keep it up!
Ron, I think that email thing may have been a scurrilous rumour?
ReplyDelete