Thursday 31 August 2017

Flog It! Live from Barnet Council - The Darlands Lake sell off

Roll up, Roll up, You name it, Barnet Council will flog it!

The latest episode of Flog it! Barnet style occurs at 7pm on Monday night at Hendon Town Hall.

The star prize will be the Darlands Lake nature reserve! A real bargain for budding entrepreneurs in the Borough. Whilst most local residents recognise a vital wetlands nature reserve, to Barnet Council it is a low value/low quality space. No recognition is given to the unique ecosystem, the migratory birds, the amphibians and other unusual species found virtually nowhere else in London. The justification is that they've failed to maintain it for years.

Somewhat incredibly, one of the uses they explored was a cemetery. What sort of idiot would want granny buried in an area prone to flooding?

It could not be clearer what Barnet Coincil think of the local environment. As a community we should be proud to have a nature reserve in our locality. Sadly for us, the Tories who run the council only see assets as things that can be flogged to raise cash, to plug the gaps in the budget created by their disastrous outsourcing policies.

I have asked the committee a question. Here it is

Dear Ms Mwende,

I have the following question for the Assets, Regeneration and Growth committee on Monday 4th Sept.

 I note the proposal to outsource management of Darlands Lake to an unspecified third party. Given the abject failure of previous outsourcing. Excesses ( Your Choice Barnet multi million bailouts, parking fiasco enforcement problems as documented by D. Dishman, chaos in IT, multi million court cases with Care Homes, huge hidden charges exposed in the One Barnet contract by John Dix, the illegal operation of Metpro,etc), what possible confidence can the Barnet Tax payer have that this outsourcing of a vitally important nature reserve won't end in yet another expensive fiasco.

Regards 

Roger Tichborne

Ms Mwende is the council officer who handles emails for the committee. The answer should be interesting

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why would there be any interest from "budding entrepreneurs" when the council paper you linked specifically states the lease would go to a "not-for-profit group"?

Rog T said...

If you look at the salaries of CEO's of major charities & 'not for profit' groups, you'd realise that the term does not mean people aren't making pots of cash. The other issue is what happens when a suitable 'not for profit' group can't be found. The paper specifically states that they are not prepared to maintain the status quo.