The news reported in the Gazette that Hillingdon Council's North Planning Committee has approved the council's plans to build a pay and dis-play car park on New Pond Playing Fields in Sidmouth Drive is no surprise to me ['Another bite out of our green places', Ruislip and Northwood Gazette, October 15].
In 2003, I represented the Green Party and local residents at the public inquiry into the plans to build Ruislip High School on Green Chain land at Sidmouth Drive.
Apart from objecting to building on Green Chain land when there was other land available elsewhere for a school, I said that it was unrealistic to have only 35 car parking spaces at the school for 70-100 school staff.
The Education Department insisted that this was adequate, as most of the staff would be living locally or would use public transport to get to the school.
If at the time they had said that they needed a much larger car park for use
of the staff as the school grew, and would take further land on the north of Sidmouth Drive, then they would have clearly lost the appeal at the public inquiry stage.
The council now shows contempt for the local residents by taking away even more of the Green Chain land to build a car park, which in the planning application documents is stated to provide extra car parking facilities for school staff and others.
At the original public inquiry into the school, the Conservative administration and even Councillor Mike Cox (Lib Dem) supported the plans to build the school, with the full knowledge that they were only proposing very limited car parking facilities within the school grounds.
If Mr Cox had listened to the concerns of the local residents at the time, it is possible that the school would not have been built on this site and the problem of providing extra car parking spaces would not have occurred.
GRAHAM J.LEE,
Hillingdon Green Party, Beech Avenue,
Ruislip.
