Wetland plan is ‘potential death trap’

10:30am Thursday 20th March 2008

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I'd like to alert the people of Pershore to Wychavon District Council's plan to create a potential death trap for children on Abbey Park.

Where small children are concerned, what is the difference between a pond, a bog or a wetland? They all contain water to varying depths but according to RoSPA, only 100mm is needed to drown a child.

Many of you will have seen the re-enactment of The Bridge Over the River Kwai with the installation of a board walk over the main path into town from the Abbey Estate! I'd like to point out that the current plan is NOT to have any hand rail on this which I fear will create difficulty for the many elderly people who currently use this path.

Of course, the path needed attending to because it is constantly flooded due to the council's failure to drain the bog area. However, a bit more forethought would have seen a much simpler design with no ramps whatsoever!

Not satisfied with this, they are blatantly going to ignore the official advice of RoSPA regarding not having any kind of ground-level water in the area where children under five play and they have installed a drain from the water park straight into the bog so that it is constantly filled with water when the water park is in operation.

The excuse they are using for this are words like bio-diversity' and former monastic fishing pool'. Please don't be misled by this. Having studied the old plans of Pershore's Abbey Park from the early 1900s, the Monk's fishing pool was clearly adjacent to the bowls club and did not even extend as far down as their boundary.

Lyn Ladds, Pershore Action Group.