Stop Birmingham City Council Selling Holders Lane Playing Fields

Lead petitioner : Roger Lynch

Status: New > Draft > Rejected > Accepted > Collecting signatures > Awaiting submission > Submitted > Pending owner response > Closed > Withdrawn

Status: Awaiting submission

Petition

Birmingham City Council must not be allowed to sell the lease for Holders Lane Playing Fields. This area is Public Open Space and if the site were properly refurbished and maintained would provide much needed facilities for local community and sports groups to use.

Background information

In the last 20 years 5,000 Playing Fields have been sold across the country. Here in Birmingham within the last 10 years the Birmingham Sports Centre site in Highgate, with its full-sized astro-turf pitch was sold for Retail. Nearby a few years later a large section of Billesley Common Land (Public Open Space) was sold to Moseley Rugby Club, now Birmingham CC are seriously thinking of selling the lease of Holders Lane Playing Fields (adjacent to Cannon Hill Park, Moseley/Kings Heath) to a large commercial organisation with aspirations to redevelop the site for their own purpose. Meanwhile more than 30 local community sports clubs are without a home ground and the community is crying out for more rather than less facilities for people to come together to enjoy playing and watching sport. An organisation called Kingsbridge has been working with the Council for more than 4 years developing a feasible, sustainable and community led alternative for the site based on the principles of Community Asset Transfer. During this time Kingsbridge have invested over £44K of public funds, and an equivalent of more than £40K in volunteer hours. Despite these efforts, Birmingham City council are now minded to adopt a procurement procedure to dispose of the site- a process that will almost certainly disadvantage a genuine community based group such as Kingsbridge. (Kingsbridge Community Sports is a consortium of local grass-roots sports clubs, resident’s forums and third sector organisations with a common mission- empowering the local community and bringing people together through sport. For more information see www.kingsbridge-community-sports.org)

Signature Count

957