Your Green is Under Threat
Go to the 'Fight for the Pits' page to read the latest on our fight to save Harding's Pits for the town.
Four years after it agreed to a 25 year arrangement for Harding’s Pits to be managed as a Doorstep Green, King’s Lynn borough council wants the land back.
The council says that it needs to divert the River Nar across the Green and to build houses and flats on the area of the green to the north. This would destroy the Green altogether. There has been a vague suggestion of an alternative site for another green (but not a Doorstep Green) further up the Nar.
The reason given for the river diversion is that it will be necessary to control the potential for surface water flooding arising from the residential development. The residential development is necessary to raise money from the sale of land for the planned marina.
HPCA says there would be no risk of flooding if the density of the housing was reduced and no need for so much money if a more modest — and more practical — marina plan was devised.
There has been considerable publicity locally about the new scheme and strong public opposition is already building up. A recent poll in the Lynn News showed that more than 80 per cent of the respondents were against the sacrifice of the Green to meet the needs of a marina development that very few people (and at least some borough councillors) simply do not want.
Much now depends upon a meeting which borough councillors and senior officials will have on 23rd March with representatives of Natural England.
They will be trying to persuade Natural England to break the covenant into which the council entered in 2004 to keep the Green as public open space and as a wildlife reserve for 25 years. They are so concerned at the opposition being put up by HPCA that they have insisted that the association must not be present on 23rd March to put the public’s side of the case.
A petition is now circulating in the town which asks Natural England not to revoke the covenant. This has been arranged by residents of South Lynn and the Friars, the two communities closest to the Green.
A copy of the petition can be viewed and printed out here. When completed please send to address on the petition.
Alternatively you can send an e-mail. Click here to open an e-mail containing the petition to which you can add your name and address.
Thank You
