Save Honor Oak Recreation ground! Stop Southwark Council turning our park into a cemetery!

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The campaign to save Honor Oak Recreation Ground has reached the national news this week!

The e-petition has gone over 1000 and there are many paper petitions being signed out there in the community.

Southwark Council are threatening to use the invaluable open green space, Honor Oak Recreation ground, for burials.

In case anyone is unsure of where these are, they are behind Honor Oak station - an oasis of playing fields in the middle of Camberwell New Cemetery - a result of some serious bad planning in the past.

Southwark maintain they acquired this area for burial in 1901. But times change and this is the only open space available in this part of the community for football, training, sports days for local schools, walking and playing. We know how busy Peckham Rye park is, and Honor Oak Rec is just as busy. Southwark Council list it on their website as one of their smaller parks. They have no sustainable burial policy so even if they used the Rec, which park would next be in danger of being nibbled away for burials? There are many areas of re-usable areas in Camberwell New, Camberwell Old and Nunhead cemeteries and of course, there is the 3 acre site on the old Southwark Nursery site next to HOP station. This piece of land has now been cleared of the illegal dumped mounds (at a cost of ?3.4 million) and it was thought that this was the next area for burial. Southwark have carried out a burial audit and are apparently putting together options for the future. Honor Oak Recreation Ground should not be even considered for this possibility.

The local community is giving that message to the council - loud and clear!

Sign the petition on:

savehonoroakrec petition

Check out the Friends blog (where you can listen to a piece from the Today programme, watch BBC London News, read a SLP/Mercury article .....

friends of honor oak rec blog

And check out SE23 Forum for more discussion!

http://www.se23.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4090