If you need to contact the City of London / Epping Forest Parks authority concerning any incidents on Wanstead Flats, the telephone number is
020 8532 1010
Meeting Thursday 12th February 7.30 2009
The Meeting of the 12th February 09 at Godwin school was fairly well attended in spite of the miserable weather.
After an initial discussion regarding how the organisation should continue, it was decided that in addition to the open meetings such as the current one, it would be advantageous to organise a committee which would meet in between the open meetings in an effort to coordinate the responses to some of the issues regarding Wanstead Flats.
A representative from the City of London Epping Forest organisation was the first guest speaker. He updated the meeting on the general issues of Epping Forest and its consultations with a number of the local councils. Most of this is positive news including plans to replace some of the signposts with an Epping Forest Gateway (low posts with a Tree Grain style effect) to give the whole of Epping Forest a unified identity. These are dependent on some funding that has been applied for. He also confirms that Epping Forest are keen to conserve the current identity of Wanstead Flats with its combination of sporting and other recreational activities, while conserving its natural habitat and nesting grounds. He is keen to improve the Flats within its current context and openly listened and agreed with some of the suggestions from the meeting including having a bicycle rack, so that visitors to the Flats could lock their bicycles safely as a way of promoting non car visitors to the area. However there is one issue that came to light, that because of Wanstead Flats location between 3 councils, Newham, Waltham Forest and Redbridge, the consultation with Newham compared to the other councils has been negligible, as although it touches their border they have not been involved with the consultations.
2 Guest speakers from Sustrans ( an organisation promoting cycling) were the next to speak. They explained that Sustrans are working with TFL and the Olympics groups in order to promote cycling. He continued that it has been found the people were encouraged to try cycling if there were good safe routes in place such as greenways. He stared that there were initial plans to cross the flats in a Northward direction, but that had now been changed to a route that circumnavigated most of the flats around its borders. There was some discussion with the meeting concerning the type of track that would be acceptable. Most of the audience were in favour of no surface and that some of the attendees cycled across the flats with no need of any new paths or routes. One member also stated that the existing paths around the Flats had a natural gravel base that already made them quite suitable for cycling. The Sustrans representatives went out of their way to reassure the meeting that they had no plans to develop Wanstead Flats in any way and that they were as committed to keeping its natural aspects while promoting more cycling on it and as using it as a cycle route.
After this discussion it was agreed to arrange a meeting for anyone interested in being on the committee of the Friends of Wanstead Flats in March ( date tbc) while the next Open Public meeting would be in April (tbc)