SLM WEEKLY DIGEST 20-2-15

We promise it isn't all a load of old rubble to report... View this email in your browser SLM Weekly Digest Keep Our Marshes Open and Green! This is the Weekly Digest of Save Lea Marshes.  We are an open group of people living in the Lea Valley Area, concerned to keep the Lea Valley and surrounding green spaces for local wildlife to thrive and people to enjoy both now and in the future.  To find out more about our work please see our website www.saveleamarshes.org.uk In the mix this week: RUBBLE, RUBBLE... – as David Bowie once almost sung.  A keen eyed SLM member spotted a tipper truck off-loading rubble by the old changing rooms on Hackney Marshes.  Upon enquiry with Sam Parry, Hackney’s Park Manager, this appeared not to be a case of fly-tipping but an arrangement to ship rubble from the pathways of the  Middlesex Filter Beds – where they are ripping up a lot of the old paths, levelling, removing cracks and irregularities “What’s that?” I hear some of you saying,  “Isn’t this part of the local industrial heritage?” “What’s that?” I hear others of you saying, “Is this rubble intended to be used as foundations for the new sports pavilion that hasn’t got planning permission yet?” “What’s that?”  I hear other people saying, “They’ve put the rubble on the Hackney Marshes car park space, where will we park on Sunday?” TOWER WATCH – front page story of this week’s Hackney Gazette is the London Borough of Hackney’s plan to build a 13 storey tower block on top of a new school in Tiger Way, Hackney Downs.  This would be a block of 72 new flats on top of a two-class,  430 pupil school.  Still at the pre-planning stage, if this development goes ahead, locals claim it would overshadow the park.  But Mayor Pipe seems to think that this dark shadow on the horizon would be mitigated by plugging a £40 million gap in the borough’s Building Schools for the Future programme.  Plans are also afoot for a 23 storey block for homes, a referral unit and a school in Nile Street, Hoxton.  www.hackneygazette.co.uk BLOG SPOT – those of you wanting to keep up with what’s going on with the mini-Holland scheme in Waltham Forest in more detail can go to the blog page www.wfoc.blogspot.com CPRE NEWS – the latest newsletter from the Council for the Protection of Rural England has items on  how London is the second most sustainable city in the world; how the London Assembly estimate that over 8k affordable homes are being lost on major estate regenerations and the Labour Party say that a further 6k houses are lost under right to buy schemes; also that it looks unlikely that the SERPLAN will be revived and that the London Conservative Party is looking towards “Thames City”, spreading London to the green belt and beyond and that developers are getting greener but in a more exclusive way (that more green space is being created but it is not accessible to the general public).  To find out more go to www.cpre.org.uk TROUBLED WATER - the Canal & River Trust (CRT) declared on 13th February 2015 that from 1st May this year it will refuse to re-license all boats that “don’t move…far enough or often enough” to meet its Guidance for Boaters without a Home Mooring – unless they take a permanent mooring. This places boat families under unique pressure as many cannot afford a mooring. Sign the petition against this move here EVENTS The Ecology and Conservation Studies Society Spring Series of public lectures is currently underway (we mentioned a few weeks ago the field trip taking place around Walthamstow Marshes in July).  For further details of these well attended and very interesting sessions go to http://wwwkbbk.ac.uk/geds/our-research/ecss/free-public-lectures LVRPA Workshop meeting this Sunday 22 February, at the Waterworks, Lea Bridge Road or walk from Hackney Marshes over the ugly red bridge turn right and follow the signs, from 1-3 pm. Next SLM meeting will be on Monday 23 February, 7.30pm towards the back of the Princess of Wales pub, on Lea Bridge Road, all welcome.