On Thursday we once again took ourselves to the Council Cabinet meeting at Harlow Civic Centre. We wanted to find out more about the funding issues that have been quoted repeatedly in internal communications (obtained as part of our DSAR) as being the main obstacle to overcome.

Our question was:

On 5th June 2023, Natural England emailed Harlow Council starting that should Harlow Council wish to consider horse riding activity within Harlow woods it would require adequate resource management from the council. Please can the council detail the additional resources and resulting cost that would be required to permit this activity.

The response received was:

The council has arranged a meeting between council officers and Natural England for later in September. At this meeting it is expected that advice will be given regarding what mitigating measures to allow horse riding in the SSSI whilst protecting the site from further damage caused by the activity. If affordable mitigating measures are identified the council will then submit a Notice of proposal to cause, carry out or permit operations requiring Natural Englands consent on a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) to Natural England seeking consent to allow horse-riding in the Harlow Woods SSSI. Natural England then has 4 months to consider the proposal and respond once it has been received.

On the face of it this is an amazing step forward and we would love to take the council on their word, but our trust has been severely eroded and we have been here before and had our fingers burnt with promises of meetings that don't materialise so we will wait and see. Cllr Purse confirmed at the cabinet meeting that the meeting date has not not yet been set and that we will be invited to attend. So, a slight contradiction to the published answer but we will take the positive in that we will get a seat at the table.

We know from the communications we received on 23rd June and 13th July from Cllr Purse that the council did seek advice from Natural England and were told by Natural England that it was not possible within the current management plan.

We also know from our conversations with Natural England that the first steps towards gaining permission would be for Harlow Council to submit a request and work with Natural England to identify what changes would need to be made to the existing management plan.

As a result of our recent DSAR, we now know that local officers were asked to look at what would need to be changed in the management plan to allow the activity to proceed, however this did not happen despite repeated requests to do so from councillors and other council staff.

We have started to look at ways that we as a riding community could support the council in achieving this and the Natural England paper they supplied us provides some excellent examples of how hacking can be achieved at low cost. We are hoping that these will help us to reach a positive outcome - after all, what cost is a child's life?