The trees are gone. The house was approved. Now we need a judge.
Dear petition signer,
You signed because you knew this corner of Parkland Walk mattered, the steep, wooded bank above the path, just along from the spriggan statue that so many people use as a landmark.
The short version
– 19 trees were felled after the first appeal was dismissed.
– The land was fenced and rebranded on paper as “derelict infill”.
– A single officer approved a new house – no public committee, no vote.
– We have sent a Pre‑Action Protocol letter (the first legal step before a Judicial Review).
– We have until 11 May to fund the next stage GoFundME
– We need £5,000 for the barrister’s work and court fees for stage one.
– You can donate or read more here:
The longer version – because you signed, you deserve the full story.
For years, this petition has sat here like a small stone on the tracks, trying to slow something bigger than any one of us, the quiet, patient push of development towards the green edge of Parkland Walk.
What happens here is not only about one steep bank in Shepherds Close. Parkland Walk is a chain of such edges, and other small plots along the route are already under siege in quieter ways.
If this corner can be redefined from green corridor to “infill” without serious challenge, it becomes that much easier to treat other green margins of the Walk the same way in future, no matter how carefully the management plan talks about protecting the corridor for the next generation.
At the end of Shepherds Close, the railway never quite finished its story. It left behind a steep, wooded bank that tips down to the path, a scrap of former cutting, a little copse of trees and fox‑sleep and leaf‑mould, holding the line between cul‑de‑sac and nature reserve, just along from the spriggan that watches over this part of the Walk.
parkland-walk
Then, piece by piece, the language changed.
A three‑bedroom house was proposed. The council refused it. A Planning Inspector, walking the site and reading the policies, agreed that building here would harm the character of the area and the setting of the Walk, and dismissed the appeal.
On the page, at least, the old understanding held: this small copse was too sensitive to be treated as spare land.
A later Inspector, looking again, still found that “even cumulatively, the public benefits of one dwelling carry only limited weight and do not outweigh the harm to the conservation area, which must be given considerable importance and weight”.
If you want to read them in full, both appeal decisions are here; 2020 appeal (dismissed): https://acp.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/ViewDocument.aspx?fileid=40500282
2025 appeal (dismissed): https://acp.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/ViewDocument.aspx?fileid=61966809
Only after that appeal was lost did the trees go. Nineteen of them – the planting that screened the Walk from Shepherds Close and made this feel like more than a gap at the end of a road – were felled and the land fenced. Haringey’s own records show the sequence: first refusal, then appeal, then removal.
By the time the next application arrived, the copse existed only in residents’ photographs and memories. On the form, it had become “a disused and derelict gravelled infill site”.
The new reports talk about three off‑site trees and “no ground vegetation within the site itself”. They conclude that the proposal is acceptable in arboricultural terms, that no high‑value trees will be lost, and that biodiversity net gain can be achieved.
On the drawings, a 1.5‑metre‑deep root‑barrier trench is traced along the western and south‑western edge – a neat green line over words about London clay and steeply falling ground. On the slope itself, that line means excavating and digging down through the roots that stitch the private plot to the trunks and habitat of the Walk below.
If you read only the documents, you could almost believe that nothing much is at stake. A brownfield infill plot. New planting. No significant impact anticipated. If you walk it, you know that is not quite true.
Parkland Walk is not a line on a zoning map; it is a long, thin compromise between city and not‑quite‑city, stitched together by edges: banks, backs of gardens, little woods that don’t have names. The Highgate tunnels host one of London’s important bat roosts; the path carries walkers, runners, children, and dogs, and the wooded margins make the whole feel like an important green corridor rather than a place to develop.
What has now been approved at Shepherds Close is not just “one house”. It is a test of what protected really means when a Local Nature Reserve meets a determined developer and a council under pressure to deliver numbers.
It asks whether, after forty years of refusals and a dismissed appeal, a long‑contested green edge can be remade by stages into “infill”: first on the ground, then on the form, then in policy.
That is why a group of us has taken the uncomfortable step of moving from words to law. The Pre‑Action Protocol letter – the formal legal letter that precedes a Judicial Review – has now been sent to Haringey Council.
It sets out, in the driest possible language, the questions behind all the anger here: how this delegated decision was made, what weight was given to the site’s history and to the Walk’s protected status, and how a felled copse became, almost overnight, “derelict gravel”.
We have instructed Alex Shattock, a public, planning and environmental law practitioner ranked in Chambers & Partners for environmental law, whose work includes cases on protected habitats, climate and nature conservation.
A Judicial Review is not a magic wand. It cannot replant the trees that have already gone or promise a happy ending.
What it can do is force this decision into the light and ask a judge to look, really look, at whether the line between cul‑de‑sac and nature reserve has been moved lawfully, or simply expediently.
We are now in the narrow window where the council must respond and a claim may have to be issued. In that time we are trying to raise £5,000 – enough to pay for counsel’s advice and the legal work already done on the letter, and to carry this challenge through the first stage if it has a real prospect of success.
It is one defined step, not an open‑ended pot. If the case is hopeless, we will be told so. If it is arguable, the council will be asked to answer in more than polite phrases.
If every person who signed this petition donated, this first step would already be funded. Not everyone can, of course.
But if you are in a position to turn your signature into a small donation – or to send the link to someone who loves urban green spaces, even if they have never heard of Parkland walk – that would change what is possible.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/stop-secret-planning-at-parkland-walk-green-corridor-build
If you cannot donate, you can still help by sharing it, by writing to councillors, by reminding anyone who will listen that protective words on a designation map only stay real if we insist on them, patiently, case by case, Tree by Tree.
What happens if we don't raise it?
If we miss the 11 May deadline, the chance to challenge this decision is gone. The house gets built. The precedent stands. And other green edges of nature reserves and conservation areas in the UK become that much easier to treat the same way.
What happens if we do?
The council has to answer – in writing, under legal scrutiny – why a contested house on a nature reserve was approved by a single officer without a public vote. And a judge gets to look at whether that decision was lawful.
If every person who signed this petition paid the price of a coffee and a snack ( £10 - £20 or more), we would already have reached the target. Not everyone can, of course.
And please share this update on Facebook, Nextdoor, WhatsApp, or just by email to a neighbour who walks the Walk.
Thank you for still being here, after all this time, since you first signed.
This little corner has not given up yet. Neither, it seems, have you.
With hope,
Aisha
Heritage under pressure
4,891 heritage assets in England are officially recorded as at risk of neglect, decay or inappropriate development.
The UK is the fifth‑worst country in Europe for loss of green space to development, with around 604 sq km of natural land lost between 2018 and 2023, including about 12 sq km of national landscapes – roughly 1,680 football pitches.
A recent investigation found that special protections in national landscapes are being “trumped by local developments”, including housing schemes that nibble into protected areas such as the Chilterns, Cotswolds and Kent Downs. What this means for Parkland Walk
Parkland Walk is a Linear Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation and a Local Nature Reserve, a protected green corridor on paper as well as in people’s lives. The national picture shows how often those protections are worn away by persistent local schemes and the pressure to deliver numbers.
This campaign is not just about one house on one steep bank. It is about whether those designations mean anything when a developer is persistent, and a council is under pressure, and whether a place like Parkland Walk is allowed to erode by inches or defended as the heritage it already is.