A public meeting will be held this Sunday 19 February at 6pm at the Marsh Community Centre about the Freeman’s Wood area which has been fenced off preparatory to re-development. The aim of the meeting is for people who want to help to save the area to come together, organise and get cracking. The organisers are hopeful that the Council will decide not to designate the land for housing when it makes its decision on land allocations in the spring.
One proposal on the agenda is to revitalise the non-political “Friends of Coronation Field and Freemans Wood” body that was set up several years ago to successfully raise funds for the new play area on Coronation Field. It will need new officers but it already has a suitable constitution and a bank account.
Further possible actions to protect the field are:
Apply for public footpath status for paths across the land.
Apply for Town Green status for the land.
Get the area designated as a county biological heritage site.
Add to the number of people who have already written to the Council objecting to development on this site.
Some progress has been made on all of these actions and more people are needed to help make them happen and to give evidence of use of the land over the last 20 years or so. The group would like to find out as much as they can about the history of the site and about any other ideas to protect the land.
If you cannot attend the meeting but still want to help, please contact:
Cllr Jon Barry tel: 844113 jbarry@lancaster.gov.uk
Cllr Melanie Forrest tel: 751717 melanie.forrest@btinternet.com
Cllr Tracey Kennedy tel: 64258 tkennedy@lancaster.gov.uk
County Cllr Chris Coates tel: 840530 ccoates@lancaster.gov.uk
Freemans wood was left to the people by lord Ashton. As a tax payer and a person of lancaster i object to this development, for which my permission has not been sought. As i along with everyone else who is a person of lancaster,is a stake holder and owner of this land i hope to demonstrate my exclusivity to this area by planning my own development designed to protect this area.
This will remove any exclusivity the developers have to the property which i along with Lancasters other residents own.
If a representetive of the people of lancaster has agreed to the sale of this land this was done without a consultation and as a result is void.
The developers are then therefore essentially squatting as i understand it and as the sale is void the only thing protecting them would be the law of aqusition – does this need looking into further?