Exeter Plan can Help Protect Community Playing Fields
Exeter residents have been given extra time to respond to the Exeter Plan - an important blueprint that will shape how and where building in the city takes place.
The St Leonards Neighbourhood Association (SLNA) are hoping residents will use this extra time to help add an additional layer of planning protection to the Mount Radford Lawn which it would like to acquire for use as a Community Playing Field for the area.
The current owners are looking to sell the greenfield site at a higher price for property development. However, they are unable to do this as there isn't planning permission to convert the playing fields to housing.
This protection comes from a national statutory Sports England Playing Fields policy that aims to maintain opportunities for healthy sporting activity across the country.
In addition, following an application from SLNA, the field is listed as an "Asset of Community Value" thanks to its use by many schools and clubs in the area over the years for sport and other outdoor community activities.
This is why the playing field remains undeveloped, unlike the rest of the former Royal Academy for Deaf Education campus on the Topsham Road, which is currently undergoing extensive building work as it is transformed into the St Leonards Quarter and the controversial retirement apartments on Weirfield Road.
It appears, however, that the field is deliberately being left unused in an attempt to develop it in a similar way in the future.
Re-moving the Goalposts
At the end of 2020 South West Water were given permission to use the field as a temporary worksite while renewing a storm drain in Colleton Crescent. On completion of the works the following year the storage compound and offices were cleared and the playing field grass replanted.
Sharp eyed residents will have noticed that following this, in the early summer of 2021, the permanent fixed goalposts (shown in the photo) that marked out the playing pitch on the lawn were removed. Other permanent metal signs on the site using the words "playing field" were also taken away.
The reason for this is likely to be that developers had received advice that while they were in place, the grass was still technically a playing field, despite being unused. Therefore their removal could start a countdown to the loss of Sports England planning protection.
Exeter Plan Protection
The Exeter Plan provides an opportunity to help add back this protection from being lost to the local community. Preventing an important area of green space in central Exeter being built up and paved over. Instead, allowing the land to be made available for sport and exercise to local clubs and the local community again.
Residents have until December 19th to respond to the Exeter Plan and ask that playing fields in the city are protected from development at: https://exeterplan.commonplace.is - perhaps commenting under Health & Wellbeing or Natural Environment.
