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New Statesman
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Why are Britain's park barbecues going private?
Photo by Roger Cracknell / Alamy One of my most-pedalled summer cycle routes is through the Olympic Park in east London. This leads me into what is known as East Village: gentrific-ese for the redeveloped area that served as the Olympic Village in 2012. It has since transformed into an eerie residential district of glassy-eyed housing blocks, lilypad blobs of green and a local economy powered by dynamic croissant pricing. On these bike rides, dodging toddlers and frightened Italian greyhounds in polo necks, I grew fond of one innocuous strip of grass on the eastern fringe of the park. In 2014, the year I moved to east London, communal brick barbecue pitches were installed there for anyone to use on a first-come-first-served basis, for free. Suddenly, there was some joyous chaos to the place. All hungry life was here. Sprawling, messy gatherings for football clubs, Pride parties, iftars, Ukrainian Independence Day, Sizdah Be-dar, asados, braais, first birthdays and 50th ones. Grandparents snoozing on camping chairs in the shade; kids wielding corn-on-the-cobs as big as their heads; dads with tongs. London united in that primal, pan-cultural impulse to light a fire and grill things over it. But by 2022, all four barbecues in the area had gone; there are no plans to reinstate them. Get Living, the build-to-rent developer of East Village, had them removed after reports of loud music, littering and illegal parking. In the pandemic era, a quiet backlash against al fresco gathering crept through the country, such was the local distaste for outsiders – often with no gardens and nowhere else to go – visiting national parks and beaches in record numbers at that time. In 2020-22, barbecue stands in Southend, Somerset and across London were all removed. As far as I can tell, from an informal survey of London parks, there are only two grill plinths left. This scalpel to our civic life is subtle but scarring – a 'minor social symptom', as George Orwell put it in his 1944 Tribune article 'As I Please', when lamenting the railings being put up around London's parks and squares. Years earlier, they had been removed for the collection of scrap-iron, but also as a 'democratic gesture' to a war-weary public in need of green space. Freedom was the point. 'The parks were improved out of recognition by being laid open, acquiring a friendly, almost rural look that they had never had before,' Orwell wrote. 'Many more green spaces were now open to the public, and you could stay in the parks till all hours…' From pay-to-book football pitches to fob-access playgrounds, Britain's communal amenities are vanishing from council budget spreadsheets. Barbecue stands are a standout example this summer, as it becomes clearer each year that this is a hot country now, and our infrastructure is falling behind. Where the public realm retreats, private enterprise gallops in. A start-up called EverGrill now charges users for the electric hotplates in north London's Paradise Park £10 for 30 minutes of cooking time via an app. Its Germany-based founder is asking other councils to instal stands. He aspires to Uber's Lime bike scheme – for example, making users take a photo to prove they have left the hotplates in a decent state. 'In case they don't behave, or they don't clean, we can charge,' he told me. When I asked him if paid time slots change the nature of a barbecue – laid-back and open-ended affairs with many dishes to prepare at different speeds, inevitably with lots of semi-competitive hovering – he accepted it did, but 'in a positive way'. 'You get a better service, because you know you can have it to yourself… It optimises the resource.' For councils, the upside is a third party incentivising maintenance and order, while maximising use. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Yet despite handwringing over vandalism and littering – common excuses made by the bureaucrats ridding their parks of such features – such 'democratic gestures' of free leisure have always been possible. Bournemouth, for example, bucked the national trend in 2021 by installing 29 electric barbecues across its beaches for anyone to use in the summer months. Burgess Park in the south London borough of Southwark redeemed itself last year by installing three free electric hotplates to replace its six beloved grills – described by the food writer Jonathan Nunn as 'home to a thriving barbecue culture… This wasn't sausages and burgers on a Tesco box, but jerk chicken, large rumps of picanha, ribs, suya, eaten and shared in groups of dozens' – which were closed off in 2020. When 'minor social symptoms' begin riddling your neighbourhood, they shouldn't be ignored. Public parks – and our freedom to access them at leisure – are 'comparatively modern and hard-fought developments', warned Travis Elborough, a writer nicknamed the 'hipster Bill Bryson', in his 2016 book A Walk in the Park. 'The roots of even the humblest neighbourhood park or recreation ground lie in age-old battles over land and liberty.' The patrician concept of 'rational recreation', an aim to control working-class leisure time by promoting sport and self-improvement, characterised the Victorians' creation of public parks. By that era, the enclosures – a process of fencing off common land for manorial ownership – had largely been completed. Peasants could graze cattle freely on 'the commons' before these began. We may have lost that right, but our freedom to grill beef patties from those poor old cows is still, just about, in play. [See also: How anti-migrant politics came for Deliveroo] Related
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Senior Tories and big landlords discuss ways to thwart renters' rights bill
Senior Tories have held private talks with big landlords about how to thwart the government's renters' rights bill, the Guardian has learned, with ideas including launching a legal challenge under human rights law. Jane Scott, the shadow housing minister, recently hosted a roundtable meeting with several of the country's largest landlords and estate agents, at which they discussed a number of ways to delay or stop the bill altogether. The ideas included challenging it in the courts and delaying it with repeated rounds of Lords amendments, according to three people in attendance. The discussions have prompted accusations of collusion between the Tories and property industry. They also give an indication of how hard the Conservatives are likely to fight the bill in its final stages, even though the party tried to pass a similar version of the proposals when it was in government. Anny Cullum, policy officer at the campaign group Acorn, said: 'The comments by Baroness Scott have confirmed what we suspected: that there is a coordinated attempt by landlords and their supporters within the Lords to frustrate the progress of the renters' rights bill.' She added: 'Unelected and unaccountable Tory peers are using underhand tactics to deliberately delay this vital legislation even more – legislation that many of them supported in its previous guise under the last government.' Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: 'England's 11 million private renters have been waiting years for genuine security and safety in their homes. With reform finally on the horizon, it's utterly disgraceful that a handful of self-interested peers are resorting to cynical delay tactics designed to slow the progress of the renters' rights bill to a crawl.' A Conservative party spokesperson said: 'The Conservatives have been warning that this bill is deeply flawed, as it will lead to a reduced supply of rental homes … As is standard practice with all legislation, the official opposition engages privately with a range of stakeholders to hear their views.' At the heart of Labour's renters' rights package is a ban on no-fault evictions, due to come into force as soon as the bill received royal assent. Other measures in the bill include preventing landlords from accepting more rent than the amount for which a property has been listed, and enacting 'Awaab's law' to force landlords to carry out essential repairs within fixed time periods. Michael Gove attempted to enact a similar set of proposals when he was housing secretary in the last government, but his bill failed to pass before the election was called. Since then, the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has hardened her party's stance against such reforms. Scott's meeting with landlords and estate agents included representatives from the property group Get Living, Dexters estate agents and the National Residential Landlord Association, among others. Get Living told the meeting they had instructed a senior barrister to examine bringing a legal challenge to the bill on human rights grounds, an initiative which Scott welcomed, according to two attenders. One said she told the meeting the legal challenge might stop the bill 'dead in its tracks'. The Scottish Association of Landlords launched a similar challenge against the Scottish government's attempts to bring in a temporary rent cap, arguing it violated the right to property as enshrined in the European convention on human rights. That challenge ultimately failed. A spokesperson for Get Living said the company wanted the bill to succeed. The spokesperson added, however: 'There is a group in the professionally managed rental sector that significantly contributes to new housing stock that are concerned about the legal issues the government faces if the bill proceeds in its current format.' Scott also told the meeting she would do everything she could to force debate on multiple amendments as a way of delaying the bill, telling those who attended she thought she could hold it up until the autumn at least. At one point, according to one attender, she complained she could not find enough statistical evidence to say landlords were leaving the market as a result of the bill. In response, attenders said they would try to find the data she was looking for. Scott also defended the Conservatives' decision not to bring in Awaab's law, saying landlords were not sufficiently well organised to be able to respond to tenants' problems within strict deadlines. One of those who attended, who said they were playing devil's advocate, wondered aloud whether landlords should not be forced to become more organised. Not all of the property groups represented were comfortable with the tone of the meeting, according to some of those who attended. Some groups believe the bill is going to become law eventually, and that it would be best to pass it quickly with modest amendments to give landlords more certainty.
