Town green space must be preserved
The news that South Lanarkshire Council is considering a proposal to build a nursery on land at the Westwoodhill Recreation Area is setting a dangerous precedent.
The vision of building new towns like East Kilbride was to get people out from the overcrowded and polluted inner cities in the post-war era.
Part of the visionary planning was to incorporate green space into each residential area. To this day you can still trace the green corridors that interlink each area of the town.
Brancumhall, The Murray and Kirktonholme all have access to football fields situated in the green space for the local community to enjoy.
From these pitches, teams such as EK YMCA, EK Dynamo, Kirkton Wanderers, Duncanrig, EK Burgh and Claremont played an integral part in shaping the East Kilbride community spirit over the decades.
Many a league and cup winning team has featured in the sports pages of this paper over the years with a host of local players making a career out of it – including the likes of Ally McCoist, Ally Graham and John Buckley, to name but a few.
Not forgetting Derby County’s Craig Bryson, who has just celebrated helping his on-loan club Cardiff City gain promotion to the English Premier League.
That’s not bad for a player who honed his skills playing for Westwood Rovers on the very pitches SLC is looking to wipe out.
Sadly, over the years, the pitches at Westwoodhill have been neglected by the council but that hasn’t stopped the local residents using it as a place to teach their children to ride bikes, walk their dogs and just get out in the fresh air.
SLC claim there is a need for another nursery in the area. That’s fine but there are areas of brownfield in the Westwood that can easily accommodate a nursery.
SLC should be focusing on preserving and improving these green spaces, not giving them away as an easy option.
Green space improves health inequalities. We know from numerous research studies that access to local, quality green spaces improves our physical and mental health and wellbeing.
A recent report from the Fields in Trust charity claims that parks and green space save the NHS across the UK an estimated £111 million a year based solely on the reduction in GP visits and excluding any additional savings from prescribing or referrals.
That’s a staggering sum of money but it pales into insignificance when you read its report on the wellbeing value associated with the frequent use of local parks and green spaces.
The estimate amounts to a mindboggling £34.2 billion for the entire UK adult population.
These figures alone should be enough for councils to think twice about giving up on green spaces and instead find ways of breathing new life into them.
It was recently reported that three in four Scots felt “overwhelmed or unable to cope” because of stress.
Ask any doctor what would help reduce stress and they would prescribe a good walk in the fresh air in some green space.
Just the other week at a packed Westwood Community Council meeting, local residents voiced their concerns about the need to stop this destruction of the local pitches.
I made it clear that this was a non-party political issue as I am passionate about saving greenspace and offered a couple of ideas to those present.
Firstly, SLC should back off from this act of folly and confirm that it will not build on the pitches.
Secondly, we should create a “Friends of ” group, allowing the community to work in conjunction with SLC to regenerate the Westwoodhill area for the benefit of everyone.
Rather than ripping the heart out of the Westwood community, a little bit of imagination could see this area rejuvenated.
I have said it many times in my battle to save local green spaces across Lanarkshire.
Once the green space is gone, it is gone for good.