Teen Wins BBC Award for Park Road Allotments Report
13-year-old Neha makes plea against redevelopment plan
Neha giving her award winning report on the Park Road Allotments
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A 13-year-old from Isleworth is one of the prize winners in this year’s BBC Young Reporter Competition for her report on the plan to redevelop the Park Road Allotments.
Neha makes a plea against the proposal for new housing to be built on part of the allotment site saying it would be “Doomed to become a finite forest of lifeless beige buildings.”
In the report Neha describes how she feels that the allotments are vitally important to the local environment and the community saying, “To me it’s the place where I grew up. Some of my earliest memories are making friends while on a picnic blanket seeing who had the biggest strawberry, who could find the biggest earthworm and chasing the butterflies.”
She says that the open space has become particularly important during lockdown for people living in flats. The location has hosted allotments for over 100 years.
More than 2,500 young people aged 11-18 submitted story ideas to the BBC competition, which is in its third year. It gives young people the chance to make their own story with BBC programme teams, producers and reporters.
30 winners from across the UK were chosen to produce their reports by judges including editors from across the BBC as well as presenters and reporters, such as Huw Edwards, Laura Kuenssberg, and Nikki Fox from BBC News, Radio 1's Greg James and Katie Thistleton, The One Show's Alex Jones, BBC Newsbeat's Roisin Hastie and Ben Mundy, Newsround's Ricky Boleto and BBC Three reporter Ellie Flynn.
A Visualisation of the planned development
Northumberland Estates pointed out that there will be a level of affordable housing in the scheme as required by the borough’s housing policy. It says, “There remains an acute need for housing and this has to be balanced against the loss of a relatively small area of under used space.” and adds, “All of the existing allotment holders have been offered a new plot and we can accommodate some larger plots for families like Neha’s.”
The Isleworth Society is urging residents to send emails or letters of objection prior to a borough planning meeting which is due to take place in the near future.
The planning reference is P/2020/4292. You can find further details of the application and make comments by visiting this page.
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March 19, 2021
