Friends of Library Wood

Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk, England

As residents of the area are well aware, a large section of the so-called public open space at the Rosary Road end of Library Wood is still fenced off, nearly five years after the developers started work! This is the area that the Council insisted on having as a children's play area, in spite of the wishes of the local community. We achieved a compromise of it being comparatively natural - including a living willow tunnel, but the Council is still wrangling over the specifications of the play equipment installed.

As some people are getting in and using the area anyway, isn't it about time Nanny Council jettisoned its selective paranoia about Health and Safety and took down the fences?

In case anyone doesn't know, Norwich City Council is renowned for wanting to ban conker trees, bouncy castles, window boxes and hanging baskets - not to mention New Year fireworks when there's a faint breeze - but is quite happy to have wheelie bins that get left out all week for people to trip over and frequently fails to provide safe pedestrian facilities when doing road works.

Then there are the ward parties...

The Friends of Library Wood and this web-site are not party-political. This is a good thing, given what the political parties get up to! Both main parties on Norwich City Council have recently distributed newsletters in Thorpe Hamlet, with articles concerning Library Wood.

First, in July, came the Liberal Democrats, with Focus Thorpe Hamlet, no. 270, Summer 2004. An article headed "Thanks for Library Wood", clearly a space-filler, was full of wrong information and made it look as though the Friends of Library Wood is a Lib-Dem front and the individuals listed are members of that party. Nothing could be further from the truth - and we had enough trouble during the active campaign against development with the then Labour administration making that erroneous assumption.

At least the author made it abundantly clear that he or she had no real knowledge of the situation, as the piece begins: "The work on the Library Wood play and green area is now completed." Really?

Then in August, perhaps in response, came an undated edition of an ephemeral publication, Labour Rose: Community Action from your Labour team in the Rosary Rd area. This was devoted entirely to the play area, which the author has chosen to rename "Rosary Road Play area".

It does make some kind of sense that the Labour Party would get concerned about the play area, as it insisted on it in the first place. Everyone else just wants the fences down so that the largest part of the promised open space can be used! A formal play area was not on the community's list of priorities for the space, but the then Labour-controlled City Council made it a requisite, and then failed to enforce its completion by the time anyone moved into the new houses (a stipulation of the 'Section 106' planning agreement with the developer), and more recently (since long before the elections) has been quibbling over the specifications of what has been installed. The effect is that local residents are deprived of a piece of open space because the Labour group wanted equipment that it is now not happy with - so the author of the Labour newsletter should remember it's his own party's legacy!

Of course, this is not the first time Thorpe Hamlet Labour Party newsletters have been off the mark. For instance, in early 2000, the party's election leaflet for Thorpe Hamlet carried a disingenuous attack on local Ward Councillors who had been supportive of the Friends, just because they are Liberal Democrats. The article claimed that the Councillors had their facts wrong over Library Wood, yet everything cited to back this up was itself incorrect (see the April 2000 FLW newsletter).

Most significantly, a 1997 edition of the Labour party's then newsletter, Eastside, again undated, carried the map and salient points from the 'planning notes' that had been produced for the site. These notes required development to fit within the footprint of the former buildings on the site and the trees to be protected. They were not adhered to in the granting of planning permission, yet the public had been led to believe that they would be by this edition of Eastside.

Isn't it time the political parties got their facts right?

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