I don't know if it was gifted, but thye cycle route network was lauded in swindon for many years as a BIg thing in our green agenda. They were funded via few different grants i think - Sustrands being one - but I didn't follow the plot as far as that was concerned either. As they were the bain od my life during their contruction at Abbey Meads - well, not the cycle routes themselves but the planning stuff around and about them - I started taking an wider interest in the 'strategic' routes too.
No doubt if I dug deep enough here, I could find the stuff relating to the wider Swindon thing, it would be on the public records, but I think it's enough to say that other things were planned for those cycle route and stream corridors and it didn't include development, that any development there intrudes on to what I and others must have thought was being left as open space. there is also the allotment thing, at a time when we should be promoting allotments and outdoor execerise areas close to housing and traditionally community open sapce should not be being built on.
People who know the exact area better than are are searching covenants etc. Developers can't TV personalities or not, cannot claim green credentials when it is clear they have none.
If you haven't taken the time to read the threads on this on TS, please take the time to do so. Whilst youa re at it, have a galnce over on the Croft school threads too, it will give you an idea of what we are up against.
Might be a good idea to look at the Biodiversity Action plans and Habitat Management plans for Swindon too. Written in hope!! Then find out the definition of foraging ground and send it on a card to SBC Cabinet, because I don't think any of them understand what it means.
Then remember that they now have no Parks Department and as far as I can establish only two rangers subsumed into SCS and don't know what their jobs will be and things don't auger at all well for ourbiodiversity anyway. So one of the top things we have to brag about will go the same way as other things - under a pile of development.
