Should our public parks remain FREE TO USE?

The public tennis courts in our local parks have been free to use for generations, but Harrow Council has recently announced plans to outsource the running of our courts to a private company, introducing play-to-pay fees, likely to be £5 per hour.

Introducing fees will:

• Stop tennis being available to all
• Change the nature of our parks from public places
• Reduce the amount of time available for general use (as they will be closed for lessons regularly)

If the council can charge for the tennis courts, what’s to stop them charging for the playgrounds, gym equipment, or even an entrance fee to the park itself?

These are public spaces – we already pay for them with our council tax.

We the undersigned, call on Harrow Council to halt its plans to charge for the use of tennis courts, and commit to ensuring our parks and the facilities within them remain free for all to enjoy.

Extra information:

The council say they need to privatise the courts in order to access the funding from the Lawn Tennis Association to refurbish the courts. But the LTA simply requires that the council has to have enough money set aside to refurbish the courts again in ten years’ time. Plus, some of our borough’s tennis courts have only recently been refurbished, and are well used!

The council is planning to use £600,000 of council reserves to fund free on-street parking, saving people 80p an hour – yet is going to charge us £5 an hour to use our parks!

Full details of Harrow Council’s plan for our tennis courts can be found here.