Nearly 4,000 residents in a Nottinghamshire village have signed a petition to ask their council to reconsider boat activity on a beloved lake near Newark. For several months the Saving Wildlife and Nature (SWAN) group have been campaigning to keep boats off Balderton Lake, and have collected 3,795 signatures from residents on a petition asking Balderton Parish Council to reconsider.
Plans previously submitted to the parish council by the YMCA hope to use the lake for watersports, such as kayaking. However, residents feat that any watersports on the lake would disturb local wildlife and cause natural habitats to be damaged or abandoned.
Primary school pupils Arrietty and Jessica, who regularly visit the lake, were asked to present the petition to Councillor Lydia Hurst, the Chairman of Balderton Parish Council. More than 50 residents supported the petition hand-in by singing songs, blowing bubbles and raising their banners outside the Parish Council.
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Sam Farrel, a member of SWAN, said: "SWAN is very grateful to the community for their support tonight. It was a great culmination of months of hard work. It is a real shame that our councillors approached the situation with no sympathy or acknowledgement of our efforts and community spirit."
Emma Oldham, who created the petition, added: "Working in environmental campaigning for over a decade, I’ve been to many petition hand-ins. I’ve never seen a council respond so coldly to a democratic peaceful process. Once again, they’ve failed to listen to their parishioners.”
Another one of the organisers, Karen Callingham, added: "We were overwhelmed with support for the petition. There were children there right through to pensioners and that's what the lake does, it is for everyone of all ages to enjoy. People have very busy lives and they come to the lake to de-stress and calm down, and to enjoy the wildlife and the kayaking will ruin it."
The council confirmed that it has received the petition and is in the process of verifying signatures. Cllr Hurst said: "We can confirm that a petition was received on September 7 2022 asking the council to reconsider its decision to allow the YMCA to undertake a small amount of supervised kayaking and canoeing on Balderton Lake.
"All signatures are currently being verified. As you can appreciate this is a considerable task for a parish council with a small administration team but once this has been completed the petition will be discussed by councillors."
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