Partnership or Handover ?

"Place-keeping through Partnership:

How can we sustain quality green & open spaces in a time of economic constraint?"

By chance I stumbled on an agenda for this event or conference taking place 11th July (tomorrow) and hosted by Sheffield’s Parks and Countryside Service in collaboration with other groups including MP4 – a kind of cross national grouping and a social science dept at University of Sheffield.( see links on the document)

It’s only wise to be suspicious of any proposed changes to the management of that land held by Sheffield City Council on behalf of the public it is supposed to serve. Especially when words like ‘partnership’ are being bandied about. Will, for example, some officer or director push for handing over public land for leasing or managing to an outside organization and then a year or two down the line find himself offered a job by the same outside organization: questions about revolving doors are always relevant in local government. And it’s well known that pressure has for some time been applied on local authorities to dispose of their assets. So I looked again.

It clearly says on the flier/agenda that there will be 50 participants by invitation. Who might these 50 invited participants be? I asked the Director of Parks to tell me. He said the event was for “organizations and interested agencies rather than a public event”. “Interested in what?” might be a question for later. But my query about who were the 50 invited participants revealed not 50 but a list of 131. So these invitations were on a different basis – one assumes that once the first 50 acceptances were in the event became closed. So how does that achieve any balance? Of the 131, no less than 44 were people employed by Sheffield City Council itself! Others were certainly ‘usual suspects’ such as those from National Trust, RSPB, PDNPA etc., names that come up often. There are also a number of ‘friends groups’ so the director’s words implying only interested agencies were not accurate. Also elected members on the invitation list named only the present Labour administration’s Cabinet Member and Cabinet Adviser, none others and nobody from any of the opposition parties. So I wonder if the outcomes from this event will show a degree of unanimity that you only get when you ensure alternative voices are not present? Much of the content may of course be about urban parks and green spaces outside the concerns normally flagged up by this blog. Sheffield by English standards has a considerable area of greenery which some local politicians seem to find a burden however much they boast about it to outsiders, so there is no shortage of problems. But the western hills and moors much of it in the national park still need informed debate not simply acquiescence in the self serving line of the conservation industry.

It looks as if more FoI work needs to be done.