Addington Hills in bloom: this is a tract of land that The Addington Golf Club wants to take over, claiming it is ‘unmanaged’ – which is not actually true
Here, PETER UNDERWOOD, local conservationist and Green Party election candidate, pictured left, outlines his objections to the proposal, and launches a public petition
The plans for The Addington Golf Club to take control over and fence off our public spaces just so they can build a driving range on Shirley Heath for their private members’ club must be stopped.
One of the wonderful things about living in Croydon is being able to visit our amazing parks, woodlands and green spaces. We use them to go for a walk, run or cycle. We walk the dog and take the children to a place where they can run around. And we use them as a place to connect with nature and get away from the noise and concrete in other parts of Croydon.
One of the bad things about Croydon is that we are constantly having to fight off threats ruin those green spaces.
Addington Golf Club has announced plans to build a driving range, an irrigation pond and other buildings on Shirley Heath and threatened to build sports pitches and other unspecified “facilities” all over the rest of the heath and Addington Hills.
It is quite clear that the golf club just want to grab public land to build the driving range for the members of their private club. Their own document says that the driving range “could” be open to the public. Access to their golf course at present will cost you £165 a time at the weekend, and you have to be wearing the right clothes and you have to play golf.
I am known as a defender of our green spaces, and so it’s probably no surprise that I am completely against this latest land grab.
As Matthew Frith, from the London Wildlife Trust, said in yesterday’s article, the proposals as published by The Addington are “a typical pretext that we see in many development proposals that seek to damage or remove areas of nature conservation importance”.
The first day I ever volunteered with The Conservation Volunteers was working at the top of Addington Hills to look after the lowland heath habitat. I met a great bunch of people, we spent all day debating over whether it should be called Addington Hills or Shirley Hills, and we had a great time working to look after the site. It got me hooked on conservation work and I have returned many times to Addington Hills and Shirley Heath to look after both sites.
Insulted: the conservation work of hundreds of volunteers, here on Shirley Heath, over many years, has been dismissed by the golf club owners
So when the Addington Golf Club refers to both sites as just “unmanaged woodland”, it really is an insult to the hard work of literally hundreds of volunteers who have devoted their time and energies on those sites over many years. It also shows that the golf club don’t really understand, or care, about how these sites have been managed up to now.
That is another reason for not trusting them to manage them in the future.
On a wider level, both Shirley Heath and Addington Hills are registered as Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation. Both are graded at Metropolitan importance – the highest level for sites in London.
Both of these sites contain fragments of lowland heath. This is an increasingly rare habitat and the London Wildlife Trust estimates that around 85% of heathland has been lost over the past 150 years. You only have to think of another big heathland site in Croydon, Thornton Heath, and other similar places across London to see why we don’t have much heath left – it was all taken over and built on. Just what The Addington Golf Club is threatening to do now.
Addington Hills has been a public site for more than 100 years and Shirley Heath for nearly as long. As with all our parks and green spaces, they could do with more support from the council to look after them. But giving them over to a private club and building on them is the opposite of what we should be doing with these sites.
Ray Mears, the bushcraft expert and television presenter who grew up in Croydon has said, “Green space is very good for our psychological health. It makes us sharper, it reduces anxiety, it makes us feel good…. that’s what greenery does for us. It does improve our lives.”
If you want to save Shirley Heath and Addington (or Shirley) Hills from being built on and keep our green spaces open to the public for free, then please sign the petition and write to your councillors and other local politicians to demand that they stop the Addington Golf Club’s dreadful plans from becoming a reality.
- Peter Underwood is the Green Party’s candidate for Croydon and Sutton in the London Assembly elections being held on May 2
Read more: Suspicions raised over golf club’s Addington Hills ‘land grab’
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