Prince George’s Playing Field is situated south of Bushey Road, and is a large open ‘green space’ carrying both Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) and Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) status.

The field is currrently in private ownership, although there is a long history of public access for sport and recreation. Council officers have recently been in touch with local Lib Dem councillors about their view on use of the site.

I’m writing to you to give you an update into the Prince George’s Playing Fields site, as I know that you and your residents are particularly concerned about the use of the site .   .  .  I thought it best to let you all know where we are and the Council’s position regarding this site.

As you will know, the site is open land, laid out as playing fields and is designated in the UDP [planning rules] as Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) – the urban equivalent of green belt. On MOL, one might expect to see sports or other leisure uses, but would not expect to see uses that would compromise or damage the open quality of the land. However, under the General Permitted Development Order (GDPO) – one is allowed as permitted development (PD) to hold 28 days of temporary uses on the land in any calendar year. Of these 28 days, 14 days may be “sales type events”.

You will also, no doubt, be aware that that the planning enforcement team has had extensive dealings with this site, going back to 2008 . . . .

As it stands, the enforcement notice still is in force, and would mean that any breach of the permitted development rights would immediately be illegal, rather than “unauthorised” as is usually the case with breaches of planning control.

There have so far in 2011 been 14 car boot sales. A further 2 seem to have been planned according to adverts placed in the local press, but the operator . . . called these off after a conversation with myself, in which I stated that the Council took such breaches very seriously and given the history of breaches would favour prosecution.

As their 14 days for “sales type events” have been used up, they would have a further 14 days for other events. 6 days have been used for funfairs and they have the Zimfest event planned for this Saturday the 27th August. This leaves 7 days for the remainder of 2011. I’ve been notified this morning of an American classic car show to take place on Monday the 29th of August. This would obviously leave 6 further days, of which we currently have no notification of any intentions.

. . .

I’m grateful to yourselves, and your residents, for keeping me up to date. As most of these events take place on weekends/public holidays we do not usually have the ability to monitor them, so it is especially vital that concerned residents have been keeping track of them for me.