Dear Bedford Borough Council,
As a local resident to Bedford Park, I find it deeply unsettling that the public consultation for the ‘Temporary Change of Use to Winter Wonderland’ for Bedford Park, scheduled to end on 9 October, currently standing at 37 objecting and seven supporting (or more than five to one objecting), has been extended not just once from 30 September to 9 October, but now again.
Read: Winter Wonderland tickets on sale – and they haven’t got planning permission yet
Why has this been moved again? Is this because the current split of responses is inconvenient in that it truly demonstrates Winter Wonderland should not be in Bedford Park?
Winter Wonderland, from Thurston’s Entertainment, arrived unannounced to locals, through a deeply flawed and incompetent planning process, in the penultimate week in October 2023.
While it physically left on 15 January 2024, its presence was still felt into June 2024 through the enormous skid-stain of unusable park.
All told, roughly eight months for a ’temporary’ change of use and the area of the park is now still rutted and pitted, unusable for the majority of activities and games that used to happen there.
No chance of cricket anymore and if you have a game of footy you run the risk of breaking your ankle. The bond of £1,000 put down by Thurston’s to make good in no way made good.
So while you ponder on whether to approve the application, please note that public spaces, ones that are of significant peace and beauty, are here for all the public.
They are not here to be increasingly commercialised by companies such as Thurston’s Entertainment, who, despite awaiting a decision on whether they get approval for holding the event in Bedford Park, are already promoting the event stating they are ‘Back at Bedford Park for a second year’.
Seems they think the decision has already gone their way or is that they just know something we don’t?
While arguments about ‘boosting the local economy’ are floated, there are only limited things immediately around the park to boost economically.
A couple of pubs at best, but the main people benefiting are Thurston’s, whose bonkersly expensive pricing for tickets and food isn’t family-friendly, especially at a time when the nation’s collective wallet is increasingly squeezed.
Better to have placed the ice rink in the centre of town, where people would come and then visit all the other shops, bars and restaurants in the immediate surrounding area and giving the centre of our brilliant town a proper boost while placing the funfair in a part of town that can cope with its specific needs.
Please please please, Bedford Borough Council just do the right thing and turn this application down and place the event somewhere that can sensibly take it and that will then sensibly benefit the town (like you promised after last year’s debacle).
Under a freedom of information request to the council, can you also please let us all know how much Thurston’s are paying the council for the use of the park and any economic modelling that supported the decision?
Justin Leahy
(Local resident to Bedford Park)
Editor’s note: You can view and comment on the planning application at Bedford Borough Council’s Planning Portal here. Or via their search page using reference 24/01668/MAF here.
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