The Green Party has scored two goals in Park Ward in recent weeks. The first is helping force the council to complete a total u-turn on the proposed cuts to the East Reading Adventure Playground Areain Palmer Park. Second following on from the Green Party‘s campaigning for safer roads with their 20‘s Plenty campaign the council is going to sign up to the national Speed Awareness Campaign and start to look more closely at speeding on our residential roads to make them safer.

ERAPA is a vital resource for local people providing a meeting place for childrens‘ groups with a state of the art playground suitable for disabled children. Labour said it must go because of lack of volunteers and funding. However, the council‘s decision to close ERAPA was put on hold in March - to give them time to hear back on funding applications - following on from the campaigning by ERAPA and the Greens. Now that local Green Rob White, has volunteered to join the ERAPA committee, and central government has released £1 million to the council under the ‘Playbuilder scheme‘, Labour has no excuses left!

20‘s Plenty is a campaign that the Green Party have been running in the area since 2006. The aim of the campaign is to reduce traffic speeds in residential streets and make them safer. The Green Party carried out a 500 plus signature petition and got ‘20‘s Plenty!‘ posters up in windows in speeding hotspots in Park Ward such as St Bartholomews Road, Crescent Road, Talfourd Avenue and Cholmeley Road. Despite initial resistance, the council has now bowed to Green Party pressure and committed to do speed monitoring in hotspots across the Ward rather than relying on accident statistics - by which time the Green Party say people have been injured or worse and it is too late.

Green Party candidate for Park Ward Rob White said: "These have been hard campaigns for the people involved but it‘s great to see the council forced into u-turns and positive action as a direct result of them. These are real successes for the Green Party and real progress for Reading."

"Unfortunately however, till we have a council that listens to what local people say and has democracy, justice and sustainability at its heart we are going to be campaigning from the outside forever. This is why it is important to get Greens elected in the coming local elections on May 1st."

"In Park Ward where I‘m standing, we polled 688 votes and were just 85 short of getting our first Green councillor in 2007. This year we‘ve been working hard on these and other issues, and so we stand a great chance of getting Reading‘s first Green councillor elected on May 1st."

ENDS

Notes for the Editor

1. For further information and interviews, please contact Rob White on 07985 923938, or Patrick Little on 01189 477658.