Windsor Great Park Environmental Centre has been closed by William and Kate

[ThatLadyLadyShesTheMan]

https://www.bbowt.org.uk/explore/discover-and-learn/windsor-great-park-berks

“A SOCPA (“Serious Organised Crime and Police Act) security boundary is being introduced by the Home Office and Thames Valley Police in a small area of Windsor Great Park close to our Environmental Centre.”

It’s just not a good look at all is it? A place where inner city children get to go and explore nature, being closed by the royals

If you are moving it's normal to be given a different site before closure, where have they been offered? . Will they also be moving the public footpaths and car parks that are being reported as closing?

All good questions but they don't affect if i think it's appropriate to move a cordon to ensure security.

It isn’t appropriate.

they don’t have a right to disrupt the general public as and when they like.

Who is "They"? In this case it is the police who are establishing a new security cordon using their legal powers. The police do have the right.

I think you’ll be surprised at the powers the Home Office has when it comes to matters of national security…

Aldo, Windsor Great Park isn’t public land. It’s part of the Crown Estate. So yes, they do have the right to disrupt the general public.

I imagine they are doing it now - when it is closed anyway - to cause the minimum amount of disruption and plan to have the new arrangements in place ready for when they are due to reopen in the new year. I'm not a fan of the royals - the opposite in fact - but this is a simple issue of logistics and I they are trying to organise the move so that people are not overly inconvenienced.

Mountains and molehills

OP I think there are other members of the Royal Family that have done worse things I hear..

😂 When they do lock him up, put him in a zoo rather than a prison so we can pay to gawp at him!

It isn't public land, schools don't use it at this time if year. It's a temporary measure during the downtime and they are working towards a solution.
London is one of the greenest cities in the world BTW.
I no fan of the royals, but this is just a frothy, foaming at the mouth non story.

Presumably they've been made aware of credible threats and are reacting to that in readiness for the Wales family's house move?

It would have been better if the announcement of the new location came at the same time as the announcement of closure.

Totally agree! At this stage, it's such a non-story. I'd be more sympathetic with the OP if we were a year on and BBOWT were no longer running their activities and everything was fully closed down with no option for an alternative site.

I suspect it's because they are still working out how much of their work actually needs to be done in a new location and they are waiting for the police to fully determine how big the security corden needs to be and how it's going to be policed in practice.

I imagine one of the issues is that the entrance to get to the centre goes through the Forest Lodge Gate House which will probably become a security gate staffed by royal protection officers. At the moment, a one-way system means they can only enter from that direction

So they need to find either a new entrance to get to the centre car park or move some of the activities.

I'm not seeing the big problem with this and I'm very local. The Windsor Great Park is huge with lots of access, you can still walk in many places and this hardly affects it at all - it's just the closure of a small part.

As at least one PP has said, this isn't public land, but part of the Crown Estate, so there is no public right of way.

This is not a loss of "green spaces in the city", it's Windsor Great Park which is a royal park full of these security exclusion zones already. They're probably moving the centre to a new location while it's closed for the season. I've heard they're moving the entrance Christmas tree sale area and Christmas decoration shop this year as well, as where the public drives in is basically the driveway straight up to Forest Lodge where the royals are now living. From the works they've been doing it looks like they might be relocating the entrance to enter via Holly Walk down towards the peanut roundabout.

This is very much NOT a loss of public amenity, honestly. Windsor Great Park is absolutely enormous at 5,000 acres, which is about twice as big as Richmond Park, or more than 6 times the size of Hampstead Heath, and has masses of free green spaces available to anyone with miles of public footpaths. Moving security zones around is par for the course and they're always opening and closing bits, it's a working estate.

Allegedly that that sound not be far away from how him and his billionaire cronies treated teenage girls.. except it wasn’t just gawping .

If you had read the article you would know 🙄

If you had been born in the 1500s would you have enjoyed being one of the crowd who used to go along to cheer when people were hung, drawn and quartered in public?

Have you looked at map of Windsor by now and managed to unfroth OP?

Yes, I expect so.

Yes. Hence my comment.

@ThatLadyLadyShesTheMan Which city? Windsor Great Park is a big park near a small town. A lot of the park is open to the public.

What a non-issue. It is hardly used over winter anyway.

It will probably have a great new location come the spring when it reopens as usual. If it doesn't by then and cannot reopen then there might be an issue but I don't think that's too likely given the vastness of Windsor Great Park.

Mountains and molehills here.

I still think announcing its “great new location” at the same time as announcing the closure of the current one would have looked much better. It’s not very long til spring, after all.