Between Christmas and New Year, local residents may have received a leaflet from one of the Conservative councillors and the Conservative MP calling on them to sign their petition to “Save Merton’s Parks”.

This is because, according to the leaflet:

“Merton’s Labour Council agreed proposals to transfer responsibility for the upkeep of the borough’s green spaces to the South London Waste Partnership, a waste collection and processing organisation with no experience of parks’ maintenance.”

Reading the comments left by residents on the online petition, there’s a lot of worry that parks maintenance will be transferred to an unaccountable private company, even worse, a “waste management” organisation with no experience.

However, the truth is somewhat different. Despite their rather confusing name, the South London Waste Partnership is actually a group of senior council officials and councillors from each of Sutton, Croydon, Kingston and Merton. These are the people who run our Council waste and environmental services. You can read more about them here.

Not only are they not a “waste collection and processing organisation”, they also won’t be taking over the upkeep of our parks. Rather they will be choosing the organisation(s) that does.

The Waste Partnership is a group of people who work together across the boroughs to organise joint services, which in theory are to save money. The reason they’ve been chosen to take on commissioning for joint maintenance of parks is because they are existing “machinery” to work together across the boroughs.

Cllr Dean, the Conservative councillor who is spearheading the petition is either confused or deliberately misleading the public in suggesting that a waste processing company will be running our parks. He is better than this, and we deserve better than this.

Now, we have many concerns about what Merton Council is proposing to do with parks. What limitations and protections will there be in choosing the organisations that will look after our parks? How will they be accountable to the local authorities and the public? Who will be responsible for monitoring their performance? And what will happen to existing local authority employees?

These are the real questions that need asking. There’s a massive difference between a vast conglomerate like Serco being put in charge of our open spaces, and a group of small, locally-based outdoor maintenance companies being commissioned to do the work, or indeed, local Friends Groups and charities such as Sustainable Merton (who is commissioned by Merton to run various projects round the borough).

Wimbledon’s Lib Dem Parliamentary campaigner is leading a campaign to protect the quality of our parks and open spaces.