Harrow Park Visitors Lost in Wilderness

Half of Harrow’s parks are so overgrown and neglected that Harrow Council has declared them a wilderness.

Answering a Freedom of Information request from HaHa Harrow, Harrow Council has revealed that of the 49 open spaces designated as parks in the borough, 22 need serious attention under its “no more wilderness parks” campaign.

These are the parks the new Council leader, Miss Susan Hall, told the Harrow Times were “so overgrown they might be a delight to adventurer Bear Grylls but no one else”.

Although the campaign to combat the undergrowth repeatedly gets central billing in Harrow Council publicity material, we haven’t yet found any of the 22 parks Miss Hall declared were “no secret” and the source of many complaints from her constituents.

Since they are “no secret” and represent nearly 50% of all parks, they should not be hard to find. Every other park in Harrow must be one of the impenetrable ones.

Dealing with the “wilderness parks” is a big issue for the new administration, becoming its first major project at the insistence of Miss Hall and diverting money away from a fund designed to help vulnerable residents cope with the transition to the latest restrictions on benefits payments. Miss Hall’s Conservative administration has decided that rehabilitating “wilderness parks” is a greater social priority.

Our FoI request, made over a month ago, asked the Council which of the parks had been designated wilderness. We are still waiting to find out.