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What's next for The Green Backyard ? |
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19 Mar 2012, 11:24 AM
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Volunteers have started to dismantle a major environmental project in the Peterborough whose long-term future remains unclear. However, as sections of The Green Backyard were pulled down its founders announced ambitions to build East Anglia’s first completely recycled community centre in the city.
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Sophie Antonelli at the Green Backyard
Deputy Mayor of Peterborough and Councillor for Fletton and Woodston, Lucia Serluca, met Sophie Antonelli and her father Renny, from The Green Backyard, on Monday at the Town Hall. It was the pair’s latest attempt to iron out the future of the environmental project.
Talks have been under way with Peterborough City Council to secure a long-term lease for the eco-hub at its current home, in London Road, since UK Power Networks announced they would excavate part of the site in September to replace power cables.
Miss Antoinelle called the latest meeting “reassuring”, but said the future of The Green Backyard was still no clearer.
She said: “If we did get a long-term lease then I would be looking to secure capital funding for a really exciting flagship sustainable building which would be used as a community hub to host all of the things that we’re doing and lots and lots more.
“So if we’re able to stay there that would definitely be one of the things high up on our agenda. In order to develop any kind of exciting building it would have to be a minimum of 10 years, maybe 25.“
No-one at the city council is telling The Green Backyard to end its work, but the issue was where that work would continue, she added.
She said: “We think it’s critical that we do stay at London Road.
“It’s exactly what an Environmental Capital should have a its heart and we’re only three years in and we’ve been set up by volunteers, with very little money, and we’re already attracting people from other cities around the country to come and visit Peterborough and come and see what we’re doing.”
Peterborough City Council previously ruled out a long-term lease for the 2.3 acre site which falls under the South Bank Opportunity Area and they say must be kept available for future developments.
A city council spokeswoman said: “Green Backyard’s current location on the London Road allotments was originally intended purely for the start-up phase of the project, before moving to an alternative site where a long-term lease could be granted.
“We are working closely with Green Backyard to look for a long-term solution by way of relocating them to a site which they can occupy with the security of a long lease. A relocation strategy will aim to minimise disruption to on-going projects at London Road.”
Officers from the council’s Growth Team told The Green Backyard, on December 21, to demolish a row of hand-built workshops to make way for new power cables that needed to be laid below the allotments’ western boundary.
Following the work, access to the strip of land would be excluded from any future lease of the site. The project’s short-term lease has been confirmed as expiring in May 2013, after initial confusion led to fears of it ending this May.
Credits:: Peterborough Evening Telegraph / Photo David Lowndes.
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