After a Guardian Cities investigation found many of London’s parks and gardens were privately owned by large corporations, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for these spaces to be reclaimed by the public.
“We must reclaim our public spaces from the corporate interests who want to control them,” he said. “Our country’s laws should govern public space, not secretive private rules. City life is made rich and exciting by our varied shared spaces. They should be run in the interests of the many not the few.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan had also addressed the issue, saying that vast Tory cuts are to blame for the private sector’s growing role in managing public spaces.
A spokesperson for the mayor said that Khan understood “the strength of feeling about public spaces and is concerned that the government’s ongoing austerity measures will continue to push cash-strapped boroughs into working with private companies to deliver new, additional public space it cannot afford to create and take on itself.
“The mayor will go as far as the law allows in his new London Plan to ensure rules applying to such spaces are no more onerous than those that apply on publicly owned land,”
Caroline Lucas from the Green Party also said that the Guardian investigation was “deeply concerning”.
“They are clearly unwilling to act in a transparent way about the restrictions they have in place for use of their land,” Lucas said. “The public sphere has been degraded in many ways in recent years – from the selling off of public services, to the streets on which we walk going into private ownership. The government should look to legislate as soon as possible to ensure that open spaces in our cities are governed by the law of the land, not secret regulations drawn up in boardrooms.”
Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “councils should protect all public spaces and in particular ensure that rights of way remain open. They also need to make it a clear condition of granting planning permission that the public are given every reasonable access.”