2 November - Drowning in hogwash
Bexley
council’s proposal to close the nine year old Splash Park in Belvedere has
caused an understandable outcry and yesterday a group of concerned parents met
in the nearby Scout Hall to listen to what the Cabinet Member for Community
Safety and Leisure and opposition councillor Daniel Francis had to say about it. For a
hastily organised meeting on a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon the turnout of
nearly 60 adults at its peak looked to be a good achievement.
The Splash Park is a hi-tech paddling pool with a purification tank and pumps
beneath it which provide a variety of wet and watery features to amuse and
entertain the borough’s children. It has been a great success in previous years
and along the way survived the Tory plans to impose an entrance fee which are
dusted off after every election but this year it was suddenly pronounced a
health and safety risk and closed for maintenance as often as it was open. No
detailed reason was ever given apart from ‘cleaning’ and some people who know
how Bexley council operates could see the writing on the wall. Then, on October
15th, for the very first time
the council mentioned E. coli.
All the politicians were on their best behaviour with Alex Sawyer the Cabinet
Member at pains to be seen as the reasonable man. I have no idea if he really is
because thinking about why I am inclined to like him I have realised that my
opinion is solely down to the fact that he is almost the only high flying Bexley Tory
who has ever acknowledged my presence in the council chamber and his put downs
of the opposition are far more witty and perhaps more intelligent than those of
the run of the mill Tory bozos more often found in Bexley’s council chamber.
The fact Alex Sawyer aligned himself with the disreputable councillor Peter
Craske in a stunt to get the Splash Park past the colluding chairman of the
wholly inappropriate People Scrutiny Committee to push his closure propaganda
rings alarm bells with me. He was accompanied yesterday by councillor Philip Read which was not reassuring. Read once made up a cock and bull
story to have a fellow Bexley blogger thrown in the cells for 24 hours.
Fortunately a judge saw through Read’s story. Maybe I should judge Alex Sawyer by the company he keeps.
Sawyer’s trump card is his E. coli story and he says it was detected at low level
eight times in the 2014 season. There were other organisms present from
time to time too. The answer advocated by the installer company is a two tank system at a
cost of between £350,000 and £500,000. When the short life span of the Splash
Park was queried councillor Sawyer said it was like all things, what is state of the art
yesterday is tomorrow’s trash, like phones and computers. At least one
member of the audience swallowed this story but to my mind it is totally bogus.
E. coli has probably been around for millennia, water has consisted of two parts
hydrogen and one oxygen since time began and little Johnnie has always had the
occasional nappy malfunction. How did any of that change for 2014? The filters
have the same job to do now as they did in 2005. Questions such has how often
E. coli was detected before 2014 or even if the number of park
users had increased or not were all unanswered because no one knows. Councillor
Sawyer repeated his line from the scrutiny meeting that children’s safety was
his top priority and if he wouldn’t let his own child use the facility he
couldn’t allow the park to continue. As a meaningless tug at the heart strings
it is hard to beat. No toddler or teenager became ill, the risk approximated to zero.
It became apparent that the £350,000 to £500,000 for a two tank solution came out of a five minute informal
phone call from the council to the distributor; no proper quotation has been obtained from anyone. Adding a
second tank to the existing facility has not been considered by the council but I believe Labour
councillor Daniel Francis has looked into that and it might cost more like
£200,000. I didn’t hear all the detail as Daniel was drowned out by tiny feet
stomping on a wooden floor.
It has been suggested that Bexley council should make a warranty claim if such
an expensive facility has really proved to be unsatisfactory after such a short
period but it was explained that there never were any guarantees and if there
was a warranty it has been lost. Public servants eh? What would we do without them?
Some of the audience advocated raising money from an improved refreshment kiosk though I would doubt
that some of the more ambitious ideas would ever find favour with a Conservative
council. However allowing an ice cream van to ply its trade at the park gate and
take away the kiosk’s lollypop trade was widely seen as rather silly.
The Danson Park facility which has been unaffected by infections is plumbed
directly to the mains supply so unlikely to be a health hazard but that may not be
possible in Belvedere, perhaps because it is situated at the top of Heron Hill and
councillor Sawyer referred to possible water pressure problems due to the
proximity of housing which doesn’t affect Danson Park. Really?
One lady argued that the fact that Danson Park is treated as Bexley’s premier public
space is indicative of the council’s neglect of the north of the borough when the parks
in the north are “far more beautiful”. She is not wrong.
It was pointed out that the population of the north of the borough was
growing and before long there will be the Crossrail effect and the Erith Quarry
development not a mile from the Splash Park. Bexley council is itself keen to
raise as much Community Infrastructure Levy cash as possible and sees Belvedere
as prime tax territory, hence the Belvedere bridge proposal but as usual is not
so keen to give anything back.
If anything was clear from the meeting it is that the proposal to close the
splash park has been some sort of back of a fag packet calculation given very
little thought and few or even no alternatives have been explored. The money
said to have been offered by private enterprise could in fact go anywhere within
the borough, it has not been ear marked for Belvedere and in any case what’s
the point of another set of swings and slides just 150 yards from an existing
large and well equipped playground? Anything less than the continuation of the
100 year old tradition of a water facility on the site would appear to be a
waste of money. Councillor Daniel Francis spent his school holidays paddling in
the Belvedere pool and seems to be just the man to ask a whole load of questions
which Alex Sawyer was unable to answer yesterday.
For completeness this is what Alex Sawyer said at the recent scrutiny meeting.
The recording begins with the mumbling Peter Craske but it gets better.
Funny he had all that detail in front of him while attending a meeting that
had nothing to do with parks or leisure. A put up job? You bet.
Personally I do not rate the chances of retaining anything worthwhile at the
top of Heron Hill at all highly. Bexley council under Teresa O’Neill has not
improved the borough in any shape or form except when spending money from Boris,
lotteries or housing associations. Hers is a scorched earth policy which is
interested in nothing other than ensuring that Bexley’s
24th position in the
council tax league doesn’t get any worse. And most people haven’t noticed yet.
‘Arthur Pewty’ has
blogged on the same subject today from a slightly different perspective.
Click
Facebook for the Splash Park page.