Harrow Borough Council’s go-ahead with the Pinner Park Farm proposal (‘A practical plan for this land’, Harrow Times, November 27), is a spit in the eye to public consultation and Friends of Pinner Park Farm’s valid pleas to keep the farm on the site.

They must be listened to and this proposal rejected, if the council and its Labour leaders have any attachment to original Labour ideals and listening to the voice of the people.

Our farmland and playing fields are becoming rarer and are under threat due to hard-headed and unimaginative council decisions that will squander our precious amenities for development and commercialisation.

These type of ‘country parks’ are convenient and sadly feudal catch-all solutions, which allow more luxury housing and the wealthy to benefit from the domination of prime land without looking at any real solutions that benefit existing agriculture and industry vital to the UK’s economy and richness of uses and activities.

The council proposes to turn Pinner Country Park, which has a much -loved working farm and some listed 17th Century, though derelict, farm buildings, into a country park, and convert the farm buildings into luxury homes — a distinct return to the ‘lords of the manor’, unbefitting a democratic 21st Century local authority.

Like Bentley Priory and Wood Farm, wonderful parks and open spaces are being fitted out to continue the widening gap between the rich and the ‘plebs’, with commercialised ‘country parks’ overlooked by converted farm buildings or high end homes. No wonder the advisers to this project were estate agents and the consultancy period had come and gone before most people had a chance to blink.

The Friends of Pinner Park asked for an extension to the consultation period and a retention and expansion of the working farm as one of the options — which seems the most appealing, sensible and sustainable one.

The farming theme can be extended by creating a publicly-owned ‘community farm’ linked with educational establishments and creating market gardening with volunteers and community organisations. The historic farm buildings can be regenerated using lottery money and used to train apprentices in building trades and artisan skills, which will create training and employment.

The rest of the land can then be retained as a country park, created by local people and with their input that will make it more meaningful to the community and wider borough.

So let’s rethink this project and save our precious assets with a fairer society and fight to keep our precious working farms going.

Abe Hayeem

Whitchurch Lane, Edgware