29th April 2008

Plan to privatise tennis courts on hold after Green Party intervention

The Green Party has backed local residents in Summertown over a City plan to
hand the public tennis courts over to a private company. As a result of the
pressure, the City Council has just withdrawn its plan to get approval for
the privatisation in the May meeting of the North Area Committee.

Local Green Party activist Chris Goodall said ‘This was a blatant attempt to
privatise the Alexandra Courts on the quiet. The City Council thought that
if it handed the tennis courts over to a private company during the election
period no-one would notice. But eagle eyed local residents saw what was
going on and complained to the north Oxford Greens. Our joint pressure has
obliged the City Council to reconsider'.

Chris Goodall went on to say ‘People think that North Oxford is full of open
space. It is not. Many young people have nowhere to play ball games.
Alexandra Courts are a vital part of North Oxford's public amenities. The
City wants to hand the area over to private company so that it doesn't have
to maintain the tennis courts any more. This will mean that local young
people will have nowhere to play. There's talk of some public access to the
courts, but it will £8 an hour. We need to stop this privatisation and
protect the open access to the area'.

Notes to editors:

1, Alexandra Courts consist of hard and grass tennis courts. We believe that
the grass courts are the only public grass courts in the City.

2, The whole area is open to the public. It has footpaths, some car parking
space and space to walk dogs.

3, The plan is to lease the whole area to a private company which would
create indoor tennis courts and run the area as a private tennis club. The
area would be fenced off and unavailable to local residents. Public access
would be almost entirely lost, although there appears to be a scheme to keep
one or two public courts available to the public at £8 an hour.

4, Local residents approached Green councillor Craig Simmons on April 24th.
Craig reported the concerns to North Oxford Greens on April 25th. Greens met
the local protestors on April 27th and issued a leaflet early on April 28th.
A worried LibDem Cllr Jean Fooks advised local protestors in a letter late on April 28th that the proposal was being taken off the agenda of the May 8th North Area
committee meeting.

5, Greens believe that the matter is actually a subject for Executive Board
consideration because it involves City property.

chris@carboncommentary.com

07767 386696