Agenda item

Three Rivers District Council has designated the Red Cross Centre as a site for future development with 6 dwellings to be built on the land.

This decision will remove a vital, well-used community space, which was built using funds raised directly from Croxley Green residents.

Three Rivers District Council own the land where the Centre is and it is completely their decision to build dwellings there instead. This cannot be allowed to happen.

In 2019 the Parish Council made an offer to take over the Centre to ensure that it remained open and available to Croxley Green residents, community groups and organisations. This has not been accepted.

Croxley Green needs spaces such as this where the community can come together to enable Croxley's great community spirit to thrive and grow.

Three Rivers District Council have not been open and transparent with Croxley Green residents over their plans for the Centre and the decision to mark this site for development is an affront and an insult to our community and must be stopped. Please sign this petition to help support Croxley Green Parish Council in their efforts to take over the Centre to ensure that it remains open for our community.

The Committee received the following petition from Croxley Green Parish Council which was presented by Parish Councillor Chris Mitchell

Three Rivers District Council has designated the Red Cross Centre as a site for future development with 6 dwellings to be built on the land.

This decision will remove a vital, well-used community space, which was built using funds raised directly from Croxley Green residents.

Three Rivers District Council own the land where the Centre is and it is completely their decision to build dwellings there instead. This cannot be allowed to happen.

In 2019 the Parish Council made an offer to take over the Centre to ensure that it remained open and available to Croxley Green residents, community groups and organisations. This has not been accepted.

Croxley Green needs spaces such as this where the community can come together to enable Croxley's great community spirit to thrive and grow.

Three Rivers District Council have not been open and transparent with Croxley Green residents over their plans for the Centre and the decision to mark this site for development is an affront and an insult to our community and must be stopped. Please sign this petition to help support Croxley Green Parish Council in their efforts to take over the Centre to ensure that it remains open for our community.

In response to the receiving of the petition of the Chair of the Committee read out the following statement on behalf of the Vice Chair of the Committee

The British Red Cross site in Croxley Green is a community asset that Three Rivers District Council have been working to protect for over three years.

Since taking over the Property Portfolio at Three Rivers I have sought to involve Croxley Green Parish Council over the future of the site. I have met with Parish Councillors and listened carefully to their ideas, shared ours, and I have been keeping them up to date on the situation.

In addition to speaking with the Parish, I have also met with concerned residents individually to listen and answer their questions.

I am grateful to have been provided the opportunity at Council to respond to claims about Three Rivers' intentions over the site with the facts.

It is simply not true to suggest that Three Rivers want to ‘’remove’’ a community space. The Council continues its efforts to provide a brand new, and crucially more widely used, community space on the site.

I used the hall as a child, but since then the British Red Cross have restricted use of the current hall for many years. The building itself also now needs significant investment and is in a dilapidated state.

Three Rivers would like the new hall to be unrestricted so that people of all ages in the community can enjoy it.

As far as I am aware, there has been no ‘offer’ from the Parish that would meet the objective of Three Rivers to have a more widely used community hall. It is in fact unclear how the Parish proposal would allow for any community use.

As I understand it, the Parish requested the British Red Cross assign them the lease for free to allow the Parish to move their entire offices and store their ranger equipment in the current building.

While I understand the Parish’s desire for new offices, it is highly uncertain that the building could be used as office premises (almost certainly requiring planning permission for change-of-use) and not get in the way of enabling a more widely-used community hall – a key objective of Three Rivers.

Ultimately, the British Red Cross have the lease to the site and control what happens next.

Three Rivers have been engaged in negotiations for some time to agree the formal surrender of the lease and at this stage both parties are working towards an agreement in principle. It has proven difficult to agree to the terms which meet the British Red Cross's expectations.

Once agreement is reached, as the site is brownfield, affordable housing would be included on top of the new community hall as a critical step in relieving pressure on Green Belt. Lib Dem-run Three Rivers are fighting to protect as much of our Green Belt as possible from the unrealistic Government housing targets. The Government requires us to, quite rightly, to use brownfield for housing. We also want to see the site brought back into use to provide the maximum benefit to the community – a new hall, affordable housing and other community uses.

For me, the proposal of Three Rivers is a win-win. It will provide a brand new and more widely used community hall and crucially help to protect our Green Belt. From my meetings with the Parish, I asked whether the Parish would be interested in putting themselves forward to run the new hall for the benefit of the whole community.

While other community groups have expressed interest, I’ve not yet had a response from the Parish. I am keen to further discuss this with them.

Three Rivers and the Parish have been working well together. In particular, our co-ordinated responses to Killingdown Farm planning appeal.

I have been supporting the Parish and Residents Association in their appeal submissions, including recommending they have a joint representative to strengthen their appeal evidence.  I really hope this positive and constructive relationship can be built upon to the benefit of the community.

RESOLVED:

That the petition be received and noted and as required under Rule 18 a letter be sent to the Lead Petitioner advising of the response provided at the meeting.