Oh, and yawn

Seems like it might bring some benefits of evening access across the park.

Agree with hellojo though, why do users of a local facility need so much parking? Endymion's a snarlup at the best of times without the extra traffic this will bring. There's a bike park at the station, and a massive rail and tube and bus hub right there.

And the noise is a major nuisance with 5-s complexes.

And agree, does this area *really* need more football?! Hmm, council site says "If the tarmac area was converted, the pitches could also be used for other sports such as netball and tag rugby." They can ALREADY be used for netball and tag rugby.

I suppose it's a revenue stream for the council which might be driving this. I wonder who initially proposed this?

It's a weird one, but by handing it over to a private company, it might make money for the council. The 'trust system' and pay-point at the new tennis courts hasn't exactly worked.

This is the Haringey Notice so far http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/news_and_events/latest_news/five-a-side_plans_for_finsbury_park.htm

I love the way the council claim they have provided an informal football are along side Seven Sisters Road ! Is that not just set of guys with their jumpers as goal posts !

The school behind us has been doing five a side for a couple of years.

Weekend mornings used to be amazingly quiet. We felt really spoilt, because of this little tranquil corner we had found.

Now, from 9am, there's screaming and shouting and quite frankly, too little midfield movement for effective pass-and-move.

I love 5-a-side, but it was nice when it wasn't there.

Tosscat - we love watching the dog obedience lessons too. If anyone is in need of £250, take a video camera down there and wait five minutes. Its as if it was a big set-up for 'You've been Framed'. Very amusing.

I've often sat around watching the dog obedience lessons and it's comedy gold. The impression I got last time was that they hadn't done the lesson yet that teaches the dogs to stop trying to hump each other.

I've been playing 5-a-side for years and there is a real shortage of good facilities. We play in Shoreditch as this is the nearest reasonable space. There was a short-lived place in Stokey but swimming pool sprang a leak and the whole place closeed.

Part of this difficulty is due to other sports becoming popular,e.g basketball, which uses the same space and therefore available time slots are reduced. We used to play at the Sobell before their arcane booking system drove us away - couldn't get a regular slot unless it was before 4pm,[?!] [or you were a friend of someone on front desk - we had to book in person and only half-hour per member - so two members had to queue at 8am and hope they could get back-to-back slots!! After that a half-hour drive seemed a doddle. The reason you take a car is because you carry quite a lot of stuff, you need to lock valuables away and most importantly you're knackered afterwards and want to drive home - 80 spaces is too many though about a third of our number drive, some cycle, others walk. [ they probably plan to charge for parking so 80 = more £'s]

Dog classes sound unmissable. What time / day?

and sunday mornings

I think generally this is a great idea.

I've lived in this area for years and have always played 5-a-side but have to travel to Enfield and Battersea Park to get a pitch. Sounds like there are other people also want to play but find it hard to get a game anywhere nearby.

I pass that area of the park twice a day and there are rarely more than a few people on there, often doing stuff they could do just as well elsewhere in the park.

But with these pitches, you're giving up to 100 people per hour the opportunity to enjoy playing sport - isn't that the sort of this councils are supposed to do? - I bet it would be really popular too. And if they raise some revenue along the way then all the better.

And I understand nobody should be subjected to shouts of 'Time, Mickey, Time' every night but these pitches are a little way away from any residential property aren't they?

I recognise I'm probably in a minority here but I couldn't agree more with hoofck's comments. This area of the park currently gives little pleasure to anyone, and seems to me like the last scrappy bit of what is a hugely improved park over the last 10-20 years. The excess demand at the Sobell shows there is local need, and I really can't find anything in the plan to object to.

PS personally, I'm against it. It's the privatisation of leisure for the benefit of the few.

Keep Finsbury Park free!

I'm not sure why we're assuming everyone who might use this facility will drive there. Where I play football virtually no one ever drives there. They go after work on the tube or bus or maybe cycle.

Also, on the money issue, it's usually about £3 per person to play 5-a-side which really doesn't exclude anyone.

I've been past that area three times this week and a grand total of zero people have been using it. Anyway, it's not like they're selling off the whole park, there would be loads and loads of free space still...

I think they should retain a couple of basketball and maybe a volleyball court but I don't know... it just feels like people object to anything new... I don't understand how anyone could be nostalgic for that big area of empty tarmac in an otherwise lovely park.

This debate reminds me of Ground Control, which wanted to be a blistering polemic on the creeping privatisation of Britain's ertswhile public spaces, from Canary Wharf to Manchester and Liverpool city centres. This is supposed to be profoundly anti-democratic and generally a very bad thing.

Unfortunately, apart from being poorly written, the book was also weakly argued, and the author ended up demonstrating that the private bodies put in charge of many of the spaces were able to manage them better than when they were subject to local authority neglect. Keeping spaces clean and safe, and converting them to popular new use, turns out to be something that private bodies can be quite good at.

In this case, I don't see a problem in principle, as it is simply another paid-for amenity in the park to join the boating lake, cafe and athletics track, all of which cost money already. I would prefer a brightly lit and well-used new facility to the dark and neglected space there at present (especially in winter).

@alex Interesting recommendation. This stuff starts and finishes with Janes Jacobs, as far as I'm concerned

I got Ground Control for my birthday, as it happens, but have yet to start it.

If the plan involves adding streetlights in the park, I'm even more thoroughly against it. I like having somewhere I can go get a decent look at the stars sometimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BANANA

Oh God isn't life too short for such tired cynicism. I give up on this thread.

Fret not. There's always the Evershot Road Open Space.

So when this scheme generates lots of lovely £££ and they come for another slice of the park, that'll also be OK, because hey, there's still plenty left, right? It'll be the death of a thousand cuts, which also makes it easier to get past planning rules (just like councils seldom get rid of a whole allotment site at once, they sell off a bit here and a bit there, nice and gradual, so nobody kicks up a fuss).

And the mere idea of 'efficiency' as applied to a park gives me the heebie-jeebies. The whole joy and beauty of a park is that it's a glorious monument to inefficiency, as expressed by a hundred people reading on their lunch break or kiting or playing croquet...similarly, 'organised exercise' can be left to China as far as I'm concerned. PE lessons at school were bad enough.

(Which reminds me of something else: according to the park byelaws, a lot of the stuff people get up to in the park is *technically* against the rules. I forget whether this includes football outside designated areas, it certainly includes a lot of of other games including aforementioned croquet. These laws are, at present, enforced sensibly. ie, not at all, unless someone's being problematic and they need an excuse to chuck 'em out. Will that attitude continue once there's a profit motive to force footballers into certain areas? We'll see)

Exactly, tons of latinamericans play volleyball there all summer - where will they go?

"Surely that's what websites like this are for "

Please good god no. If you want to speak your branes there are plenty of other places for that.

http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

Because I'm disdainful.

@andy you're welcome, though not a recommendation as such. Jane Jacobs is on my reading list. Will turn to it when I've finished my current random reading matter Wigan Pier Revisited (the googling of which led me to the rather wonderful LPFMG).

@ADGS big business might not be publicly accountable, but fortunately in this case our councillors will take the decision, and they ought to be highly responsive, especially with full elections looming in three months. Hence there's nothing anti-democratic about this. If it was unpopular (like closing A&E in Whittington) then they would be leafleting against it like mad. Actually I suspect it will be a fairly popular proposal. Certainly there are as many in favour as against on this thread.

@markwhitehead it's the sheer change-nothing-ness of your position that gets me. If parks are to be free public spaces for all as a matter of positive principle, then where's the campaign to evict the bowls club and the baseball ground, both of which exclude non-players from other parts of the park?

I'm also confused about what you actually favour, as at one point you say "the idea of doing up the area, perhaps with some five-a-side pitches, is excellent", but later you seem dead against any change at all. Would it somehow be ok if the council renovated and managed the facility itself, instead of leasing it out? What if they still charged users to defray the cost?

Battersea Park have one of these centres with pitches costing £51 per hour - anyone know if there was any soul-searching or opposition to that proposal at the time?