Taking on local government has made me feel like I’m in a Scandi crime drama

As a prep school tries to build over a field, I’m sure there’s something shady going on...

I currently feel as though I’m in an episode of Line of Duty, or one of those Scandi crime dramas where local politics is not as innocuous as it appears. I’m not saying that politicians are in cahoots with criminals, or that law enforcement and big business are exchanging brown paper envelopes... but if they were, we would be none the wiser.

What on earth am I talking about, you may wonder – well, let me fill you in. I’ve lately been battling to try and save a field near my house. It’s a beautiful space, with many mature trees and shrubs. Wild geese stop off there on their travels south; bats have been sighted. It is used daily during the week for sport by the local prep school but they now want to move the whole school there... replacing this green oasis with brick, mortar and 2,000 square metres of AstroTurf. The reason? The school plans to sell their current site in a lucrative deal to build housing, and not the affordable kind. It’s a miracle the private school, like so many schools in the UK, has charitable status.

I’m all for education – in fact, I have spent my career extolling its virtues. The thing is, the prep school is already excellent and they only just finished converting and moving into their latest property acquisition in 2014. If it ain’t broke...

Wasteful decisions like these get my goat (remember the pesto jar?). I get annoyed enough when people rip out a perfectly good fitted kitchen only to replace it with another – but a whole school?!

About the only useful thing my economics degree taught me was that, in all decisions in life, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis. So let’s take a look at the benefits...

Capacity increase. But why? All primary schools in the area are undersubscribed, with pupil numbers dropping year on year. There are already six prep schools in the vicinity, all with free spaces (errr, well, not actually free – you have to pay a pretty penny to stick your kid in there – but you get my drift).

Another plus, I imagine the school would claim, is that the new site would improve the education they could offer. As mentioned, the school’s already excellent. In fact, you could argue the loss of the playing fields and bigger class sizes on a cramped site could make it worse.

So now to the cost. This is the bit that awakened my inner Erin Brockovich, that made me think, “I will save the field!” – and turned doing so into something of a life goal.

First up, 45 mature trees will be chopped down; for each one, the council will be compensated £22. Twenty-two pounds?! An insult to all trees everywhere. And don’t even get me started on the grass being replaced by AstroTurf.

This pollution-generating, irreversible, reckless move onto a street already too overburdened to cope has so many other downright dangerous implications that I would run over my word count going into it all, so instead I’ll move on to the local democracy bit: the council vote on the planning application.​

There I was at the big meeting, a concerned local, ready to make my impassioned speech, to speak up for the voiceless trees. I had even made slides – which weren’t allowed. Bah. I’d fallen at the first hurdle of tightly rule-bound local democracy. A bit demoralised, I continued, voice trembling, thinking to myself: “Come on, you’ve trampolined on live TV, how hard can this be?” Hard, it transpired. I took a deep breath and launched in. What felt like 20 seconds later, I heard, “Time’s up.” What?! I’d only just begun.

The thing about local government is they want to hear what local people think, but for the most part, their systems are so long, dull and bureaucratic that people only get involved when there’s an issue they really care about. When they do engage, they get a hot minute within what feels like a years-long process to make their case.

The wheels of local decision-making move slowly, and while I did eventually get my say, it’s been eaten up by the system to be flattened into just another of the thousands of pieces of paper. There’s just so much paper, you can’t see the wood for the trees (while there are any left!). How can anyone expect volunteer councillors doing this alongside their day jobs to sift through it all and make an informed and transparent decision?

Perhaps it’s my Scandi suspicions at play, but there are many other factors also at play – lobbying, allegiances, politics, many councillors probably simply vote the way their lead councillor tells them to, in the hope of winning a paid cabinet position.

As thousands of people like me up and down the country fight for their own causes, our field’s future remains on the line – the next stage is to take it to the Greater London Authority. I’m getting ready to wade into the turgid process again, armed with disallowed slides and overlong speech (next time, I’m doing it in a Danish accent). Cross your fingers for me.