Almost 8,000 people have signed a petition to stop government-backed plans that threaten the creation of swimming ponds on a former Thames Water depot.
The proposed East London Waterworks Park by Lea Bridge Road has been five years in the making and has huge public support: a Crowdfunder raised more than half a million pounds to buy the site. But now a consortium of London councils, using funding from the Department of Education, have announced plans to build a children’s home there.
The 5.68 hectare site on the border of Waltham Forest and Hackney is currently concrete covered. It was once home to filter-beds that supplied fresh drinking water to the people of London.
Its rewilding would see the creation of free-to-use public swimming ponds (filled by rainwater and cleaned naturally by reeds), boosting biodiversity and creating a green corridor from Walthamstow Wetlands and Walthamstow Marshes to the north, Waterworks Nature Reserve to the east and Hackney Marshes to the south.
CPRE, London’s countryside charity, said the site “should always have been returned to open space” and they described it as: “the missing link in the open space, a huge opportunity for flood management and nature’s recovery.”
A spokesperson for the rewilding project said: “The land for our park could be lost to development, undermining our collective dream of creating the UK’s first public swimming ponds cleaned by reeds and aquatic plants, alongside vital community and educational spaces.”
Campaigners for the project say they had been led to believe the land was for sale and only learned of the Department for Education’s hopes for the site five days before plans to build a secure facility for children was announced.
Objecting to the children’s home, CPRE said they were ‘astonished” no other suitable sites could be found when so many local schools have closed. They added: “There is no justification in planning terms, for protected land being built over when other school sites lie empty and idle.
“We do not in any way dispute the need for a Secure Children’s Home, and we do of course support the delivery of appropriate provision. But the loss of protected land is not justified.”
London Councils say the home is much needed and will offer specialist care for the city’s most vulnerable children. They added there is no other facility of this kind in London. The claim to have identified 450 possible sites but say this is the most suitable. The site, they say, is owned by the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities and managed by the Department for Education (DfE).
Find the petition here.
