You can’t put a park in another county and have it classed as Luton open space. It will be Hertfordshire open space. This was admitted by the planners in the Wandon Park application, where I am happy to quote the actual passage seeing you brought up Wandon Park.
The proposal represents a gross loss of open space in Luton and, in quantitative terms, no gain within the Borough of Luton. Indeed, as the replacement neighbourhood park will lie outside of the Borough of Luton it will not be possible through the jurisdiction of Luton Borough Council to allocate this replacement park a neighbourhood park as part of any revisions to the Local Plan.
Did you know Wigmore Park was created in 1980s on top of landfill, so why is moving the whole lot further East such a big issue,
I can’t think possibly why. Maybe because it has 2 separate asset of community value orders served on it by other councils. Maybe because it was voted, in a national poll, the best park in Bedfordshire in 2019 and 2022. Maybe because Wigmore Park has taken 45 years to mature and can’t be replicated. Maybe it is because
82,000m2 of mature trees will be cut down and not only in the park plus digging up 1,152,000m2 of vegetation. As for the clay cap and its boggy conditions, this has given parts of it County Wildlife Status its unique conditions.
Regarding the unregulated landfill site, I hear people are not too keen having it disturbed after LRT took soil samples wearing full protective clothing, masks, moon boots, gloves and goggles. Oh and there were the decontamination showers in the background for every time they took a break just for good measure. And the intention? To dig the whole lot out to a depth of up to 17m within 40 metres of homes. I nearly forgot, the bomb squad were on site, as the landfill could also contained bombs and ammunition dumped after the Second World War.
The signage on the fences were equally reassuring. No mobile phones, no naked flames and no smoking.
Those pesky people of Wigmore. Why would they indeed get upset?
