On October 12 the Mayor's office sent a letter to the Friends about the new Royal Parks Board, which was announced by the government in July. The letter can be downloaded below.
The new Board will have 12 members, of which one will be from the Royal Household, three from local councils, six independent Board members and two members of the Royal Parks management. Four of the six independents will be the existing Board members, which is good for continuity.
The announcement came just before the GLA Environment Committee met to question The Royal Parks management.
The Richmond and Bushy Parks Forum met on the following Monday, October 17. It decided on three actions:
- To press for one or more of the Board appointees to have ecology and natural environment experience and for one of the council positions to be from Richmond (see the letter below)
- To lobby for local mandatory consultative commitees for all the Parks
- To press for Bushy park to be made a SSSI in the very near future.
Previous post: On October 12, the GLA Environment Committee questioned The Royal Parks management on its policies and performance.
The Friends of Bushy and Home Parks, along with the Friends of the other Royal Parks, were asked by the Committeee to give their comments to the questions that are to be on the agenda for the meeting.
The two Friends bodies amalgamated their responses as they are broadly similar parks and many of our concerns are the same.
In the submission we also referred to the Richmond and Bushy Parks Forum (RBPF), set up last year with 38 other local groups.
Below is the submission we sent; the committee's questions are in italics and our responses follow. There is also a reminder of the 7-point plan which the FBPF issued in December last year and a list of the members of RBPF, together with the Ministerial statement on the future management of the Royal Parks and a report of an earlier debate in Parliament.