The famous view from Prinrose Hill [Eightalbumdeal]

Last week the CNJ reported the Royal Parks will keep Primrose Hill locked up on some summer nights – sparking national news coverage. Those who oppose the move feel their voice has been left out as they were not invited to speak at the council meeting we were reporting on. So today we publish a personal opinion piece from Amy McKeown from the Primrose Hill Keepers, who argues it’s a short-sighted decision

LAST week the Royal Parks announced permanent gates on Primrose Hill – a move that has angered many locals. This issue is an open sore that has festered for several years and won’t heal any time soon.

Make no mistake, this decision will have a long-term negative impact on our area and local economy. This is a story of failure, short- sightedness, privilege, fear, exclusion, nimbyism and overreaction.

It is also predictably about money. Camden Council, the police, and the Royal Parks have repeatedly passed the buck about who should be responsible for managing and policing of the park and area around it rather than working together and with the local community to address alleged issues of anti-social behaviour.

According to the Parks’ published report on who responded to its survey, the make-up of those who want the gates are predominantly older, white, wealthy, home-owning park neighbours (who presumably knew their houses were near to a public open space when they bought them).

Some have gone as far as offering to pay for the gates, and referring to park visitors as “yobs” on social media.

Despite the narrative of an unsafe neigh­bourhood and park not standing up to scrutiny by way of any published crime data or publicly available evidence, the fearmongers found a welcome ear with our local councillors and Sir Keir Starmer, who have refused to meaningfully engage with the vast number of community members with a different view.

Not one council member or MP has attended the Primrose Hill Keepers’ community engagement group that has met weekly for more than two years.

Our Labour council and the most likely future prime minister have failed us.

In a world of increasing division and instability this was a chance to pull the community together and model what a welcoming, open, and safe neighbourhood (and potentially country) could look like. To manage visitors in a way that benefits the area and supports the local economy.

The Royal Parks “Engagement Survey” (not the full consultation residents were promised) would fail any test of statistical robustness.

The only “solution” to any alleged antisocial behaviour presented was gates. There were no options for responders to select options such as increased policing or visitor management strategies.

Yet, despite the survey’s bias towards gates, the two most chosen answers were to never gate the park or only occasionally on specific holidays. Answers that were ignored.

Gates are the wrong solution and gates will make the park unsafe.

The fastest-growing local crime statistic is people being in the closed park. Gates aren’t hard to jump, and in that case anyone within the gates at night would feel they’d have free rein within the park.

Supervision through open access creates remarkable safety; gates achieve the opposite.

Additionally, gates do not solve the fact that there are not enough police during a busy summer day or that there is no area visitor management plan.

They absolve the Royal Parks and police from managing the park throughout the day – everyone will get kicked out later anyway – whilst costing money and resources to clear and close the park each night.

They herd people from an open, well-lit area into narrow dark streets causing these to be busy and noisy. We are unsafely displacing, not managing park users.

Most importantly though, the real losers from this stupid decision are the most vulnerable and least privileged members of our community: the families in flats who don’t have a garden, shift workers, or people with mental health conditions (agoraphobia, autism) who feel more comfortable using the hill at night.

We have been contacted by locals ranging from carers to parents to women who feel safer walking across a lit park than narrow dark streets, and locals from neighbouring areas who use the park to access Primrose Hill hospitality venues.

These are the people that will lose out and who have been failed by our local leaders.

Primrose Hill will never be the same again. We do not want to be a community that blocks people out.

It is not too late to change this. The gates are not on the hill yet.

There is a chance for the powers that be to wake up and figure out a way to bring the community together and for us all to work together to create a plan which keeps the welcoming, open and safe community that ultimately we all want to be.

Open minds, not closed gates.