Chase Lodge Development - Kentish Town FC - A few facts

I have been asked to clarify a few facts regarding Kentish Town FC and their proposed move from Copthall Sports Stadium, to the Chase Lodge Sports Ground next door. Conservative Councillor John Hart made the following statement to local press :-

Residents are already unhappy with the amount of parking in Page Street on weekends for people going to play sport, so this would make things worse still.

I believe that before local politicians start speaking about local issues and worrying local residents, they should check their facts. As Mr Hart hasn't bothered to check his facts, let me spell out to him what the facts are. Kentish Town FC already play at Copthall Stadium, which is next door to Chase Lodge. There will be no extra local traffic. If you click on this link to Kentish Town FC's fixture list, you will see that there attendances for games at Copthall Stadium in March have been 17, 28 and 21.

Kentish Town FC play their fixtures at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon.  The key times when parking is an issue is Saturday and Sunday mornings when the pitches at Chase Lodge are currently used to capacity. Unless there is a change to the laws of football, to increase the number of players in a team from 11 to 50, there is no likelyhood of the proposals causing more problems. What will happen is that the facilities will be improved for local children.

As to the issue of development on Green Belt Land. I agree that this is a concern. I strongly support any proposal to strengthen Green Belt Legislation, to ensure that Green Belt land cannot be concreted over. I support organisations such as the Mill Hill Preservation Society who fight to preserve the nature of Mill Hill. I cannot understand why Mr Hart has been so vocal in his opposition to a football club, who get 28 people watching them, when he has said nothing about a recently opened tourist attraction on Mill Hill Green Belt (without planning permission) which has caused parking gridlock on the Ridgeway and will attract thousands of visitors every day in the summer. Could it be because the Tourist attraction is owned by a senior member of the Hendon Conservative Association?

If Mr Hart and the Local Conservatives really cared about the Green Belt, they would have amended the UDP to make the Green Belt safe and make it impossible for schemes which might damage it to progress. They have chosen to neglect this. Last year the Conservative Council even suggested passing the buck for Green Belt protection back to Central Government.

The reports in the local press talk about Stadiums and hundreds of people. Kentish Town FC play in the Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division and their biggest crowd this month was 28 people. They already play at Copthall Stadium.  There are genuine issues with parking in the locality on a Saturday and Sunday  morning. This is the responsibility of Conservative Council to sort out (an issue Mr Hart and his colleagues have done nothing about). They could easily do this by getting the local teams using Chase Lodge to rent parking spaces in Copthall School, bringing some extra revenue for the school. This is what is called a win-win arrangement. Sadly all we get is our local Conservative Councillors scaring the living daylights out of local residents with ill informed scare stories.