Agenda item
Management Plan (Brent)
This report presents progress on the Brent Reservoir / Welsh Harp Management Plan. The Management Plan is jointly managed by the three main local land-holding organisations: Brent Council, British Waterways, and the London Borough of Barnet.
Minutes:
Leslie Williams, Strategy and Service Development Officer Brent Sports and Parks Service, began by explaining that the work due to take place at the reservoir was behind schedule. He stated that it would now take place in the autumn as it was currently the bird breeding period.
He then went on to inform the Committee that they had issued a notice of three proposed dog control orders that would come into effect on 9 April 2012. Order one restricted the maximum number of dogs to be controlled by one person to six dogs and this applied to all of the borough’s parks or open spaces. Order two prevented dogs from being able to enter all playgrounds, multi- use games areas, tennis courts and bowling greens. This order would not apply to trained assistance dogs. Order three stated that dogs must be kept on leads in all of the smaller/ pocket parks, flower beds, walled gardens and other such areas where the walking of dogs ‘off lead’ would be deemed inappropriate. Again this did not apply to trained assistance dogs.
Leslie Williams stated that there would be a road show touring the borough to educate the public about the new dog control orders. The road show was expected to be at the Welsh Harp open space on 24 April 2012 between 10am- 2pm. He informed the committee that the road show would be going to some of the other parks in the borough as well.
The Chair of the Committee enquired how the three proposed dog orders would be enforced. Leslie Williams replied that the sanction for breaking any of the three orders would be an on the spot fine. However, he informed the committee that the new dog orders were being introduced to primarily promote responsible dog ownership as opposed to issuing fines. Yet, if there were people who continued to contravene the orders then they would be monitored and could be subject to a penalty.
Clive Cohen commented that if these orders were not enforced, then people would continue to flout them. Leslie Williams explained that these orders were not being introduced alone and that they were supported by other orders and by laws.
The Chair stated that in the report it detailed that the healthy walks programme was to run until March 2013, and the Chair wanted to know what would happen beyond that time. Leslie Williams informed the committee that he was not aware what would happen past March 2013.
Leslie Williams then revealed the map of the Welsh Harp zones that he had updated. He had updated it because the original zones had been agreed in the 1990’s and had now lost their meanings. He stated that the colours could be changed, and that the map was not overly concerned with detail or accurate boundaries as the features on the ground were too complex to be mapped. Similar features were assigned the same colours whether they were in Barnet or Brent or on British Waterways Land and therefore particular colours did not represent ownership. The map attempted to be inclusive and included ‘Green Grid’ links. The different areas identified by different colours were the reservoir, the reedbed, the freshwater marshland, the dam wall, wet woodland, acid grassland and sport pitches.
Leslie Williams confirmed that the zones were a work in progress and were not confirmed. The intention was to make the map simpler and to ensure Brent, Barnet and British Waterways were identifying habitats in the same way to avoid confusion.
Supporting documents: