WALTHAM FOREST: 'Build more facilities for sport' (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

WALTHAM FOREST: 'Build more facilities for sport'

8:37am Saturday 26th January 2008 in News By Jonathan Moyes

A GOVERNMENT failure to protect playing fields has led Liberal Democrats on Waltham Forest Council to call for sporting centres of excellence to be built.

Liberal Democrat figures reveal that nationally playing fields are being lost at a rate of one a week.

Cllr John Macklin has called for better protection of grassroots sporting facilities in Waltham Forest and has accused the Government of not living up to its promises of safeguarding playing fields.

He said: "It's an absolute travesty that the nation's playing field legacy is being sold off under our noses.

"The mass selling off of playing fields both in our area and across the UK was supposed to be nothing but a bad memory of the Conservative government of the 1980s.

"Instead, we have Labour MPs admitting that they have failed to tackle the problem, as they promised to do in 1997.

"Labour announced as far back as 2002 that they were reducing the size of threshold for statutory consultation on playing fields. This has proved to be yet another broken promise."

Cllr Macklin's call comes just after the council received plans on Christmas Eve to build burial grounds on the Gun Site Playing Fields in Folly Lane, Walthamstow.

The council also gave planning permission for a five-a-side football centre with ten floodlit astroturf pitches to be built on Salisbury Hall Playing Fields, locally known as Blades Field, in Morrison Avenue, Chingford, in November last year.

In addition, the designs for the new Bremer School in Fulbourne Road, Walthamstow, do not include plans for playing fields.

A question asked in Parliament by Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster revealed that on average 843 planning applications affecting playing fields are accepted each year.

Liberal Democrats are calling on the council to consider proposals for the establishment of a sports federation within the borough.

The proposals would see existing venues able to join together, providing affordable specialist training in individual sporting activities while also allowing users to study for qualifications.