Garendon residents will have to pay a premium

THE protection of Garendon Park has been a strong cause of many of your readers and equal only to the Outwoods when it comes to defending our countryside.

But two years after Charnwood Borough Council’s devastating yet predictable decision to go ahead with the building, negotiations over the future management of the park have continued in secret.

We know the linking road from Ashby Road to Derby Road will drive across the western edge, and building will be on the north and west of the estate, but we were promised that the historic landscape of Garendon Park would be given to the public.

What we were not told until very late in the day (and then overlooked by the planning committee), was that the park would be managed by a private company, not by a public body.

As with an increasing number of Charnwood’s new developments, the new residents will have to pay a premium on top of their Council Tax to the company to insure, maintain and protect all the public facilities on the development – in this case including Garendon Park.

Put briefly, this will mean that new residents will be charged for the maintenance of Garendon Park as well as for public local parks, playgrounds etc which are all to be in the hands of private companies. These companies may also obtain further income from rents of farm land, which we may find is sold off for building in the future.

Garendon Park will be controlled only by a weak and variable agreement administered by the planners at Charnwood. Even where public access is agreed, in such areas paid for exclusively by the new residents, it is likely that those new residents will want a large say in who can access the areas and how they are managed.

Elsewhere, councils have been powerless to stop residents putting up ‘Private’ signs in public areas they are paying for. And who can blame them?

Charnwood say access to the park will be guaranteed, but how will paying residents, the private management company and the land owners react to this in the future?

Many readers may find this nothing less than feudal and I suspect the borough council will have a lot of explaining to do when the full terms are finally released.

Max Hunt, county councillor