The letter referring to  Merton’s green spaces from so called Merton Matters (Merton founders would weep over plan to privatise parks, November 26) in support of the stance of David Dean (and Stephen Hammond) is a caricature of the truth.

There is no new proposal whatsoever to privatise the parks, or to build on parks, or to have the parks managed by a waste body. There is a proposal to seek to contract out the parks maintenance in a joint contract with Sutton. That would be one contract for two boroughs with consequential savings due to economies of scale from supplies, vehicles, depots and work rostas for grounds maintenance teams.

Merton will continue to have the governance and decision making for every park in consultation with friends groups. Levels of maintenance for each park will remain the same under the contract as today. We will retain the current flexibility so that the council and friends groups will be able to make improvements in future as now.

The contract will be commissioned through the highly successful body used to managing tendering processes across our four boroughs, known as the South London Waste Partnership (SLWP), comprising senior councillors and environment officers, including myself. The SLWP will not be managing our parks: Merton will be doing that. This issue is being blown out of proportion by Conservative opponents of Merton Council, who fail, quite predictably, to acknowledge that their Government has imposed massive cuts in grant funding, so that we now have to find a further £32m in savings, including £290k or one tenth from our green spaces budget every year.

Constructive suggestions are welcome, but not these Conservative distortions of the facts.

Andrew Judge

Cabinet Member for Green Spaces

 

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