Future of Warren Farm debated at Ealing Council special meeting - 13 hectares for sports pitches?
The Ealing Council Overview & Scrutiny Committee Meeting and the red-listed Skylark on Warren Farm NR whose future hangs in the balance
The future of Warren Farm NR was discussed at a special council meeting earlier this month. The Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting was called by the Leader of the Opposition, Gary Malcolm, with the aim of getting the proposal to put sports pitches on Warren Farm removed from Ealing Council’s sports strategy, which was published on 13th July 2022.
Representatives of the Warren Farm Nature Reserve campaign group were asked to submit written evidence and to appear at the meeting as expert witnesses. Our submission was based on the following principles:
Warren Farm is already a Nature Reserve in all but its official designation
The unique rewilded nature of Warren Farm makes it an irreplaceable asset for the Borough of Ealing
Any division of Warren Farm would diminish its ecological value for three main reasons:
The assemblage of species found at Warren Farm is simply unique – development and/or land loss would cause an irreparable loss of biodiversity in our borough, especially for species such as our red-listed skylarks who need wide-open spaces to continue breeding successfully here
The sheer size of Warren Farm is critical to its biodiversity and ecological sustainability
The site is Metropolitan Open Land (MOL), giving it the same protection as Green Belt. It should therefore remain accessible to everyone of any age, background and ability to take regular moderate exercise in harmony with nature conservation
Warren Farm should therefore be designated as a Local Nature Reserve in its entirety
The Warren Farm NR Campaign Group representatives present at the meeting (L-R Steve Toft, Kabir Kaul & Katie Boyles)
Campaign organiser Katie Boyles made the required 3-minute speech re-iterating these points and explaining that a chance alignment of factors has created a distinctive ecological environment creating a home to some species that are hanging on by thread here. Just as the effect of Warren Farm’s re-wilding was cumulative, the same is true of species loss. You never lose ‘just one species’ – the loss of a species always creates a domino effect of further species loss. Putting sports pitches on re-wilded Warren Farm would cause significant loss of biodiversity, putting our rarer species under even greater pressure than they already are, both locally and nationally. Why do this to a site that has had over a decade to re-wild? Wouldn’t sporting facilities be better placed where the development would cause less environmental damage? We believe so.
Katie was then questioned by the councillors for almost an hour, giving her the chance to go into these points in more detail. (The video link can found at the end of this blog post). In the event, the request to refer the sports strategy back to the council’s cabinet to consider the removal of Warren Farm as one of its potential sports sites, was rejected by a vote of the councillors on the committee.
Despite this outcome, we found the meeting very useful. It gave us a chance to explain to the councillors our reasons for wanting Local Nature Reserve status for Warren Farm NR and it was an interesting introduction into how scrutiny meetings operate, which will prove useful when we get into the detail of the council’s proposals later this autumn.
Warren Farm Nature Reserve, re-wilded urban meadow
Just how much of Warren Farm NR are Ealing Council intending to designate as a Local Nature Reserve vs. sports?
The meeting was also useful in that Ealing Council shared some information about their ideas for Warren Farm and the ‘best of both worlds’ we hear so much about on their social media channels. Some of our supporters who have watched the meeting online have raised the following point of interest with us, so we would like to take a moment to hypothesise regarding just how much of Warren Farm Ealing Council are actually intending to designate as LNR vs. sports facilities, based on some of the statements we’ve heard from them so far…
Deirdre Costigan, the cabinet member responsible for climate action and parks, said that the council intends to re-wild over 60% of the total combined area of Warren Farm and the adjacent Imperial College land to the North-West. That, she explained, would be an area of 200,000 m2, or 20 hectares. Councillor Costigan said:
“We have been working with Imperial College who own part of the land next door to the site and I’m delighted to say that they have agreed to work with us to be part of a gigantic re-wilding project that will include both our land and their land. When you bring all of that together, we would be looking at re-wilding about 200,000 sq/m on the site… We would be able to commit that - at the very minimum - over 60% of the total Warren Farm including Imperial would be re-wilded.”
The combined area of both sites is just over 33 hectares, so if we apply to this total the 60% figure quoted by Councillor Costigan, this equates to 20 hectares of rewilded land. This therefore implies that the proposed sports facility on the site will therefore cover the remaining land - around 13 hectares.
It’s fair to say we are finding it difficult to square these figures with the commitment made by Council Leader Peter Mason at the full council meeting on 19 April 2022, repeated in his recent video, to “re-wild the overwhelming majority of Warren Farm”. Both he and Councillor Costigan have said that there is an intention to re-wild the Imperial College land with Warren Farm. However, there simply isn’t room to do both those things and to create a 13 hectare sports facility. A sporting facility of that size would either have to encroach on the Imperial College land or else, as the picture below shows, would take up more than half of Warren Farm NR.
A 13 hectare visual representation of Warren Farm - for sports?
Of course these are somewhat speculative calculations - albeit ones based closely on Cllr Costigan’s “60% re-wilded” statement - but until we hear more from the Council these calculations (along with the picture above) give a best rough-estimate of just how much of Warren Farm NR size wise, could potentially be lost to sports pitches.
In her summing up, Cllr Costigan agreed that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Meeting had been a useful discussion and said that she looked forward to discussing the more detailed proposals with us and various stakeholders. We are looking forward to these discussions and to further progressing Local Nature Reserve designation for Warren Farm NR with Ealing Council.
Our 12,700 petition supporters (and growing!) have not signed up for sports but fully support nature conservation. Add this to the recent results of the council’s own Public Consultation and it is absolutely clear that the local community overwhelmingly support biodiversity over sports at Warren Farm NR. Our next steps with Ealing Council are vital to ensure that our wildlife and supporters voices are heard.
We would like to thank the Leader of the Opposition, Gary Malcolm, for inviting us to speak at the meeting and the portfolio holders and members of the committee for a very interesting and informative debate.
#WarrenFarmNR Group
Please see the recording of the meeting on Ealing Council’s YouTube channel linked below.
Timestamps:
Declarations of interest - 00:01:20
Call-in of the outdoor sports facility strategy and meeting agenda outline - 00:05:18
3 min speech by Cllr Gary Malcolm - 00:06:18
3 min speech by WarrenFarmNR - Katie Boyles - 00:10:35
Response from Portfolio Holders Cllr Jasbir Anand (Thriving Communities) - 00:15:13 and Cllr Deirdre Costigan (Deputy Leader and Climate Action) - 00:19:32
Questions from the Committee to WarrenFarmNR Katie Boyles - 00:24:15
Questions for caller-in Cllr Gary Malcolm and Portfolio Holders Cllr Jasbir Anand and Cllr Deirdre Costigan - 01:04:33
Debate - 01:37:20
Decision - 01:54:25