Parks, Farms and Privatisation

If anyone can be bothered to refer to SRWT's web pages about Blacka Moor they may notice a change since last time - in my case a few months ago. There's no longer any information about Users Group meetings - the fraudulent replacement for the RAG (Reserve Advisory Group) which had been running since 2001. This is entirely compatible with our predictions when they made the changes they did in their new Management Plan - emasculating the only half-decent community involvement in decision making by creating another secret body where discussion of policy and practice was confined to a group of unprincipled and undemocratic individuals. The aim was clear from the outset: eventually people would give up attending the Users Group thus making it such a pointless exercise they might as well give up on the whole idea.  This was further hastened when people asked for minutes to accurately reflect what they said and demanded congruity between the two groups. Now the minutes of the latest meeting have not appeared and those of previous meetings are nowhere to be seen. That may be convenient for them in that it reflects my demand that I didn't want my comments made public until they did the same for those who attended the conservation group. But that's tawdry and unprincipled managerial practice, just what we have learned to expect from SRWT, an outfit of groundbreaking arrogance.

All this reinforces the view that a ghastly mistake was made when this prime piece of public land was handed over to a private and immature group with none of the necessities of scrutiny and accountability required. No wonder the Charity Commission stalled for so long when asked to agree to the handover. And what we all suspected would happen, has happened, namely land that was for recreation has been managed as a farm.

38 Degrees is now petitioning to stop the privatisation of public parks, a trend that is increasingly found to be attractive by bureaucracies and politicians. That's always a difficult issue for those who see public assets deprived of investment and services, and therefore looking uncared for while so many private spaces receive more superficial polishing.

The main difference here is that urban parks badly need their childrens' playgrounds and other facilities to be repaired and updated while Blacka is another creature entirely; here, on a unique piece of land we just wanted the place left alone with only access arrangements improved.

There is, of course, another way. In Millhouses Park and some similar parks, instead of handing the park over to a private outfit, Heritage Lottery Funds have been used alongside local council and a Friends Group's active engagement.

The trouble with privatisation is the lack of accountability stemming initially from failures of transparency which always go with private involvement. You can't be truly accountable if you hide your decision-making processes from the public.

So where does the handing over of Sheffield's public owned land to charities stand in this? SRWT's dreadful management here may have been just as bad in the hands of the lamentably uninspiring managers in a  Town Hall that does not understand what transparency accountability and public scrutiny mean.