National Pressure Group Backs Friends of Putney Common

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With support for their High Court appeal to protect a "unique green lung"

Britain’s oldest national conservation body & leading pressure group, the Open Spaces Society, has pledged financial support for the Friends of Putney Common’s appeal-court action to save the common from road-building.

The Friends are appealing against the high court’s refusal to stop the Wimbledon and Putney Common Conservators, owner of the common, from allowing Wandsworth Council to build private roads on Putney Lower Common to give access to new development on the former Putney Hospital site. The conservators are to receive £350,000 from the council in access fees. The proposal also involves conversion of grass footpaths to gravel or tarmac with overhead lighting.

Says Kate Ashbrook, general secretary of the Open Spaces Society:
‘We are pleased to support the Friends in their excellent campaign. If the plans go ahead part of the common will be destroyed and the remainder suburbanised.

‘This is a unique green lung, which the society helped to save back in the 1870s. We are not prepared to stand by and see it destroyed now.’

FofPC have launced a crowd funding page to raise the funds for their appeal against the recent High Court judgement whic found in favour of Wandsworth Council. www.justgiving.com/local/project/friendsofputneycommon

November 21st 2013