I am writing to you at the Ilford Recorder to ask for your help in widening citizen participation in the Fairlop Waters consultation to include all your interested readers, by laying out over the coming weeks the different options for Fairlop Waters and inviting readers to communicate, via your website or conventional post, which they favour. The Recorder could then publish the results and pass the information on to the Council.

Now, please allow me to outline my own ideas for the future of Fairlop, which I hope will be one of the options put to your readers:

Fairlop Waters is a "finger" of actual countryside that reaches in and points towards the heart of London. Once you have reached it you should be able to walk, cycle or ride for miles into the open country beyond - but you cannot, 1) because Fairlop Waters is very difficult (and dangerous, along Forest Road)) to access, for anyone on foot or bicycle, 2) because footways are in very poor condition (many being impassable after heavy rain), while cycle and bridle ways are non-existent, 3) because Forest Road, Hainault Road and the Romford Road form difficult and dangerous barriers to Hainault Forest and the countryside beyond.

My suggest is simply that Fairlop Waters should be made as directly, easily and safely accessible as possible, by foot and bicycle, to the VERY large numbers of citizens living in residential areas to the west of it, very many within easy walking distance, and even more within easy cycling distance, if, that is, cycle and footways with the safest and quickest possible access to Fairlop Waters were to be provided.

You only need look at the map to see what a huge and densely populated catchment area Fairlop Waters potentially has for people to walk or cycle there (and beyond). At the moment, however - and the way things are set to remain, it seems - access to Fairlop Waters by foot and bicycle will not be greatly improved, and a major obstacle to quick and easy access will remain the 18-hole golf course, which currently forms the tip of the "finger".

Because it is in the way of easy access by foot and bicycle to Fairlop Waters, I would like to see the 18-hole golf course done away with and transformed into open parkland. Also, this would make available far more space, currently lacking,  for people to walk, sit, cycle, picnic, kick a ball around, or play other games. Together with easy access, this would make Fairlop Waters as a whole far, far more attractive than it can possibly be if so much of it remains dedicated to golf.

If properly planned, resourced and organized, Fairlop Waters could become North-East London's "Gateway" to the countryside.

It would be a long-term project, with many details yet to work out, but this basically is my suggestion. I just need your help in getting it publicized and considered for implementation by Redbridge Council.

 

Yours sincerely

Roger Hicks

http://www.spaceship-earth.org