Save Castle Park!

bristol | local government | news report Monday July 27, 2009 10:49 by Tree Beard

For reference, the section of the Commons Act 2006 which permits BCC to voluntarily register their own land as Town Green is ...

Section 15(8) - The owner of any land may apply to the commons registration authority to register the land as a town or village green.

BCC as owner can therefore simply apply to itself as Registration Authority to register the land. Alternatively, by withdrawing its own objection, it can permit the land to be registered as a town green.

The council along with developers, Deely Freed aim to turn Castle Park into nothing more than a convenient gateway into Cabot Circus shopping centre.

Should you wish to write qestions to the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee or submit a statement you can read out at the hearing then the should be submitted to:-

Lucy Flemming.
Assistant Democraric Services Officer.
Room 220,
The Council House,
College Green,
Bristol. BS1 5TR
"Lucy Fleming"

Further related info:-
City Council Jokers in Castle Park Scandal

Q: When is a green space a park?

A: When the City Council wants to build on it!

Bristol City Council have disgraced the people of Bristol many times over the years in their secret ‘done deals’ with property developers and speculators but their disgraceful behaviour over the Castle Park development has set new standards.

Shock and Awe

Back in 2006 to the shock and awe of many Bristolians, Bristol City Council unveiled plans to build offices, shops and hotels on beautiful Castle Park the historic centre of the city. Not only is Castle Park haven for city centre workers and shoppers but it also serves as a memorial peace park with the ruins of the churches bombed in the blitz. Was nothing sacred in the Councils plans to tear up the city centre and turn it into a sanitised wilderness of empty office blocks and soulless hotels? In response to the threat the Castle Park Users Group was formed to protect one of the last green spaces in the city centre adjacent to the floating harbour. The group set about investigating the development plans, collected thousands of signatures on petitions in opposition and alerted fellow Bristolians to the danger that an alliance of the City Council, Morley Fund Management and Strand Street Properties posed to our historic parks and green spaces. After the massive public reaction to the plans the City Council and the developers, Deeley Freed Estates, were forced to radically revise their plans. As they limped back to the drawing board many of us thought the park was now safe.

The Empire Strikes Back

But we were wrong, after a couple of years of twisting, turning and squirming the City Council finally unveiled the ‘regeneration’ plans in 2008 for St. Mary Le Port. St. Mary Le what? No, not a small French fishing village somewhere near Bordeaux, this was the old property speculators trick of renaming the site so no one would notice the development plans! Well they might have thought we were idiots but Castle Park is Castle Park and Bristolians weren’t going to roll over that easily. For most of 2008 the Users Group collected information from the users of Castle Park and then slapped the Council in the face with a Town Green Application. This is a legal move where citizens claim the right to a green space on the basis it has been used by them for twenty years or more without them being stopped by the owners. If the Bristolians won, then Castle Park would be protected from building by law making it what it says on the packet, a public green space, not an ‘eyesore ready for regeneration’ as Bristol City Council, sickeningly claimed on their website. The big problem of course is that in Town Green applications, the City Council acts as both the Prosecutor and the Judge

Dumb and Dumber…

The public inquiry into the Town Green application began in the first week of December 2008 in the Old Council House on Corn Street with Bristolians up against the City Council, the speculators and the developers. As we have seen with many similar inquiries the City Council were not frightened to spend our council taxes on getting the most expensive specialist barristers up from London to fight their planning battles against the general public. These barristers usually refuse to fight on the evidence provided by the public but rely on legal technicalities to get themselves off the hook. This time was no exception.

The barristers evil plan was to prove to the inquiry inspector that Castle Park was, get this…..a PARK! Seems stupid, but Town Green applications aren’t applicable to parks, probably because in the good old days public parks were actually protected from being built on. Under the Tories in 1992 the law was relaxed so any old bunch of corrupt councillors in league with some property developing scum can carve up a park. Using this sickening legal loophole the City Council aimed to scotch the Town Green application and open up Castle Park to the developers. There was one sight weakness in the evil plan, the Council’s own incompetence. They couldn’t find the legal documents to prove that Castle Park was a park! As witness after witness supported the Town Green application by providing evidence of the public’s use of Castle Park as a green space for more than 20 years, the team of Council barristers floundered around with pathetic attempts at proving it was a legal entity known as a ‘park’.

Filibustered!

After four days of legal wrangling it became clear to the Council’s worm tongue lawyers that they might actually lose this one. On the last day of the inquiry, as the Bristolians were on the verge of victory, the City Council barristers played their final card. They talked the inquiry out, that is the barrister talked for four hours non-stop about anything he could think of, including what he had for breakfast, just to run the time out. Having delayed the outcome of the inquiry for months, probably so the Council could try to find the bit of paper that proved Castle Park was a park, the team of barristers left to get back to their swanky homes in London. This disgraceful time wasting tactic which wasted our council tax money, showed the depths that the City Council will sink to frustrate the perfectly reasonable demands of ordinary Bristolians to protect their green spaces. The Evening Post journalist present at the public inquiry refused to print this scandalous story suggesting that the tossers who own the Post are themselves knee deep in these dodgy deals.

You cannot be serious….

Christmas came and went and eventually the inquiry was completed, with the City Council barristers still unable to provide the paperwork to prove their sneaky legal loophole. The Castle Park Users Group were quietly confident having proved their case of use by the public. The public inquiry inspector Vivian Chapman presented his report in March and conceded that the Bristolians had proved their case on more than twenty different legal points. However, even though the City Council had failed to prove that Castle Park was legally a park, for the first time in English legal history, the inspector said that their evidence ‘implied’ it was a park and advised the Council to reject the Town Green Application. This unbelievable decision stinks of politics and bias. On Monday April 27th Bristol City Councillors met to decide whether to accept or reject the Town Green application based on the recommendation of the inspector. Faced with a clearly dodgy recommendation, the disgraceful use of a legal loophole and threats from the Castle Park Users Group to take the case to Judicial review, guess what…they bottled it, putting the meeting off until after the Council elections in June. Conservative chairman Kevin Quarterly said ‘I don’t think there were any politics involved’….my arse there wasn’t.

In the 1640s Oliver Cromwell created Castle Park when he destroyed the royalist castle after the liberation of Bristol by the peoples’ army. The Luftwaffe bombed it to bits in the 1940s. Are we going to let this bunch of two-bit jokers steal it from us?