THERE will be more green flags flying across the borough after its parks and green spaces were recognised in the latest round of Green Flag Awards.

The tally of council-run spaces to get the nod of approval from the Green Flag inspectors has risen from six to eight this year.

East Greenwich Pleasaunce retains its Green Flag, as does Blackheath – jointly award to Greenwich and Lewisham councils.

The two parks to get the award for the first time are Avery Hill Park and Fairy Hill Park. Greenwich Park, run by Royal Parks, continues to be a Green Flag winning park.

In an interview for Greenwich.co.uk, the Cabinet member for Culture and the Olympics, John Fahy, said that Greenwich Council’s target for Green Flags was to have twelve by 2012.

Cllr Fahy gave his reaction yesterday to the latest Green Flag awards:

“I’m really pleased that eight of our parks have been rewarded with a Green Flag Award. There’s such an array of beautiful and spacious parks in the borough and I’d encourage everyone in Greenwich to get out and explore them.

“Improvements the council has made across the borough are linked to our commitment to gain a lasting legacy from 2012.”

The Green Flag Award Scheme recognises and rewards the best green spaces in the country. Find out more about the Green Flag Award scheme.

Greenwich Green Flag Award Winning Parks

• Blackheath (jointly awarded to Greenwich Council and Lewisham Council)
• East Greenwich Pleasaunce
• Eltham Parks North & South
• Horn Park
• Sutcliffe Park
• Well Hall Pleasaunce
• Avery Hill Park
• Fairy Hill Park
• Greenwich Park (Royal Parks)

The Royal British Legion is appealing for help to organise its Poppy Appeal in Greenwich this year.

Following the death earlier this year of Greenwich’s Honorary Poppy Appeal Organiser, Malcolm Smith, the Armed Forces charity says it needs new volunteers to come forward.

South east London Poppy Appeal co-ordinator, Darren Moore, said “now that Malcolm is no longer with us we have no one to distribute Poppies and collect in Greenwich.”

He added “without a team of people to deliver and collect over the Appeal, local schools and shops will go without Poppies during November.”

Steph Davenport, Community Fundraiser at the Legion, said that the role would suit someone who was looking to put something back into the local community, or perhaps a local group who would like to take on a new project.

Anyone interested in helping organise the Poppy Appeal in Greenwich can contact the the London Poppy Appeal on 0207 863 3370 or by emailing them.

GREENWICH Council wants to plant 2012 trees across the borough and is asking for suggestions as to where they should put them.

The two thousand trees are being planted as part of the Council’s “Playground to Podium” Olympic legacy scheme.

Local sites that have been spruced up already, or chosen for future planting, include:

• Six mature trees on the path in Greenwich High Road at the junction of Merryweather Place
• Six specimen trees on the roundabout at the junction of Peartree Way
• Twenty-seven “heavy mature standard trees” in Busgby’s Way
• Small copse of about 350 native whip trees at The Point

Cllr John Fahy, the council’s Cabinet member for Culture and the Olympics, said: “2012 trees for the 2012 Games will be a lasting and meaningful legacy from the Olympics in Greenwich and I’m urging residents to get involved and say where they want trees to be planted.”

Suggestions can be emailed to the council.

Lord Coe has described Greenwich Park as an “extraordinary park in an extraordinary borough.”

Speaking to Greenwich.co.uk on day two of the recent test event in Greenwich Park, the Locog Chair said this is “a country that really does understand equestrian sport.” He said that the cross country event in Greenwich Park was “always going to be a hot ticket” after London 2012 said they are looking at modelling to increase spectator capacity for the event.

Asked about empty seats during the first day of the recent test event in Greenwich Park, Coe said there was “lots of schools, lots of people in there” and that focus of the test event was the “field of play and competitors” rather than the “spectator experience”.

Lord Coe also used the interview to put the damper on Greenwich Council’s idea of hosting a concert in Greenwich Park between the Olympics and Paralympics.

While the official line is that the is being “looked at” and “scoped”, Lord Coe said the gap between the events was “not like having ten days off” and that a “lot of work” would be going on to increase accessibility and reconfigure the venue.

The former Olympic gold medallist, urged future bidding cities to use their inner city parks to stage equestrian events. London 2012’s equestrian venue manager, Jeremy Edwards, who was also present for the interview, said that the temporary deck being used in Greenwich Park could “revolutionise the whole sport.”

On the test event in Greenwich Park

Lord Coe:

The best testimony of course is not out of the mouths of an organiser, delegate or whatever, it’s always going to be out of the mouths of the most important client group which is, of course, the competitors.

We’re getting very, very positive feedback but it doesn’t finish there because the next stage for all of us will be to sit down after the competition to talk about anything, all of their observations and there the observations that really matter. But so far, they’re very very positive about everything they’re witnessing, everything from the service levels, the stabling, the quality of the people out on the course.

[Criticisms of the surface did emerge from competitors following the next day’s show jumping stage of the Greenwich Park Eventing Invitational]

When you’ve got great internal teams, a great governing body, and volunteers who really do understand the equestrian world, you’ve got more than an evens chance of delivering a great event.

On empty seats during day one of the test event

Lord Coe:

Empty seats? Well, remember, first of all, most of that morning, they weren’t empty. Secondly, there was lots of schools in there, lots of people in there, it was first morning dressage. And actually in fairness, we’re not testing, at this moment, the spectator experience.

Our entire focus is on the field of play and competitors so I think it was a really good way to do it.

Jeremy Edwards:

If you go to any equestrian event, you don’t see people sitting there all of the time because it’s a moveable feast. Large groups were out on the course.

On bringing the equestrian events closer to the main Olympic venues

Lord Coe:

It’s a sport I understand. When we started bidding, a lot of the people that are here competing and coaching were the guys that came to me and said, ‘Look, of all the people that have organised the games  you understand the sport. If you possibly can, don’t let us become disembodied from the rest of the games. Don’t stick us four hours away’.”

When I competed in LA, I flew in two weeks early with part of the British equestrian team. I saw them at the airport and then I saw them again at the closing ceremony and when I came back. They were four hours away.

[Choosing Greenwich Park] was really important for three reasons:

First to be able to give the riders an Olympic experience for the first time in many years.

Secondly, as we’ve spoken about so many times, to introduce the sport to a group of people, particularly young people, who have probably never seen equestrian sport before.

And thirdly, you know, if you’re able to showcase an extraordinary park in an extraordinary borough, do it. If you’ve got the oportunity to have an equestrian event in the inner city, why would you want to take them three or four hours away when you can put them here.

Jeremy Edwards:

I can speak from experience, being at Sydney and also being at Beijing, at Hong Kong. Yes, it was lovely and great and all the rest of it. But those athletes didn’t get to march in the opening ceremony and I would imagine, if I was an athlete, the thing that I that would most want to do, other than win a gold medal of course, is to march in the opening ceremony.

And here we can do that. And be in the village.

Lord Coe:

Bidding cities will now feel they’ve got permission to stage equestrian events as near as to the games as they possibly can and if they’ve got big internal parks, use them.

Jeremy Edwards:

I think the other thing we should mention is that this deck and the temporary stables will potentially, I think, almost revolutionise the whole sport.

These guys can now take the deck, take the soil, take the stables and put it into any part of the world. Put it into shipping containers and ship it there and all of a sudden you’ve got a horse show.

And what says to the rest of the world is that you don’t have to go and build expensive long term infrastructure such as we built at Sydney. Now Sydney is 12 years old and now needs revamping. It needs doing up. The arenas need doing up. All these things need doing up and it’s expensive.  We can pack it up and move on. To me, this is fantastic, what we’ve developed here.

On using the stadium in Greenwich Park for a concert between the Olympics and Paralympics

London 2012 spokesperson:

We’re looking at it. There are challenges. But we do want to use that period between the end of the Olympics and the start of the Paralympics as a great party which will coincide with the Notting Hill Carnival. But I think we have to scope all of that and that’s something we will be discussing with Greenwich Council.

Lord Coe:

Sparing these guys’ blushes , it’s not like having 10 days off. There’s all sorts of things you are then thinking about for the Paralympic games. You’re thinking about increased levels of accessibility, you’re talking about some reconfiguration in all sorts of areas. There’s a lot of work that goes on in converting this from an Olympic to a Paralympic venue.

Jeremy Edwards:

It’s extremely busy, you’ve got one lot of horses out, one lot of horses in. There’s a different configuration, different contractors, a whole of raft of different people. The Paralympic committee come in and the IOC really move out. A whole new raft of faces turn up and we have to build the relationships.

Lord Coe:

It’s a good problem to have because its for the right reasons, but we have actually concertinaed the time between the Olympic games and the Paralympic games to make sure we lose none of the party atmosphere and the athlete led atmosphere.

At other games, the gap has been too long and it’s actually not helped the Paralympic movement. I think, for us, given that the Paralympic movement is so much our history, the importance of making sure that, given all the points been made about the management of conversion, that we’re also able to do it as quickly as we can so we don’t lose any of that momentum.

On demand for the cross country at London 2012

London 2012 spokesperson:

At the moment, the basic capacity is  50,000 but we’re doing crowd assessment modelling and we’re looking at transport, we might increase it.

Lord Coe:

It is worth remembering that the single biggest day out in British sport is cross country day at Badminton where you’ve effectively got the contents of 3 Wembley stadiums on the cross country course.

This is a country that really does understand equestrian sport and secondly, you’ve only got to lok at the numbers that equestrian events get in this country, particularly cross country, to know that this was always going to be a hot ticket.

GREENWICH Council looks set to continue publishing its weekly newspaper, Greenwich Time, despite a government crackdown on council publications.

Council officers have prepared a report in response to guidelines from the Department for Communities and Local Government which say councils should not publish their own newspapers more than four times a year.

The tightening of rules for council newspapers was initiated by the Secretary of State for Local Government, Eric Pickles, who singled Greenwich Time out for criticism.

He told Greenwich.co.uk last year, “Councils should be focusing resources on frontline services, not running one-sided Town Hall papers that threaten the genuine local press. ‘Greenwich Time’ is one of the most blatant examples of this practice that I’ve seen, and demonstrates why tightening the rules is so necessary.”

But Greenwich Council officers believe they can demonstrate continuing with a weekly newspaper would actually SAVE money. Their cost analysis claims that switching from a weekly to a quarterly publication would see the net cost of the paper per year leap from £170,000 to £2,328,760 because of the loss of third party advertising.

The report says that Greenwich Time doesn’t compete for the same advertising as local newspapers because it doesn’t “accept advertising from escort services, massage parlours and chat lines.”

It also says that Greenwich Council would need to  advertise its statutory public notices “in at least two commercial newspapers, such as the Mercury and the News Shopper, to achieve anything close to the reach of GT”, which is delivered across the entire borough.

Some changes have been made to the paper already in response to the Code of Conduct. The Council’s logo now appears on the frontpage and the strap line explicitly mentions Greenwich Council. It has also dropped TV listings and the crossword from its pages.

Cabinet members will consider the report by council staff at next Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

TWO athletes booked their place at next year’s Olympics after taking gold in the UPIM Modern Pentathlon World Cup at the weekend.

Robert Kasza, 25, of Hungary won the men’s event on Saturday with Great Britain’s Nick Woodbridge also on the podium for a bronze medal. Britain’s Jamie Cooke, cheered on by his vocal supporters in the stands, came ninth after having smashed the world record for pentathlon swimming earlier in the day.

25-year-old Lena Schoneborn from Germany, currently World number one, was first across on the finishing line yesterday afternoon in the women’s event. Great Britain’s Mhairi Spence, Heather Fell and Freyja Prentice finished fifth, seventh and twelfth respectively.

The Modern Pentathlon, which was held as part of the London Prepares series of Olympic test events, sees competitors take on swimming, fencing, horse riding, pistol shooting and running.

The swimming and fencing stages of the World Cup were held at Crystal Palace with athletes moving across to Greenwich Park for the final phase.

See more pictures from the men’s and women’s Modern Pentathlon.

The Greenwich Park Eventing Invitational was won by Great Britain’s Piggy French yesterday afternoon.

French, riding DHI Topper W, led the field after the first two stages and a clear run of the show jumping course sealed her win.

Germany’s Michael Jung took the silver and Pippa Funnel of Great Britain won the bronze medal. The medals were presented by HRH The Duchess of Cornwall.

The Greenwich Park Eventing Invitational was the first of the London Prepares series of test events in preparation for next year’s Olympics.

The next of the test events will be the Modern Pentathlon UIPM World Cup Final, which takes place at Crystal Palace and in Greenwich Park this weekend. 36 men and 36 women will take part with automatic qualification for next year’s Olympics awarded to the winners.

See more photos from the showjumping stage of the Eventing Invitational.