Temple Pond has been ruined by a cost-cutting Conservative regime. The pond is about 270 years old. It had a huge variety of wildlife. It drains into the Stanburn which becomes successively the Edgware Brook, the Silk Stream, the Welsh Harp, the Brent, and the Thames. In 1993 it was dredged, and all the wildlife quickly reappeared. In 1998, when the lake (as it’s called locally) was almost drained, local activists Sheila and Philip Levy, together with the late Sally and John Westmacott (of Everest fame) contacted the then Labour MP for Harrow East for action. The sluice gates were closed within 20 minutes, the fish were saved, and the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Defence, Peter Kilfoyle MP gave a commitment to protect the wildlife of that pond.

All was well until the lake was de-silted last summer. Some time later Philip Levy noticed that some of the bird life had not returned; in particular a kingfisher, a heron, cormorants, and white egrets all of whom live off the fish. When he wrote to the council, he was informed that the fish that had been taken out during the de-silting would not be replaced, a decision which took everyone by surprise. Probably for the first time since the 1760s there will be no herons, cormorants, or kingfishers on the lake. The rarish white egrets are much more recent. 

This decision is all about money and seems to have been taken in such a way that no ordinary member of the public would know what was going on before the May election. Our local Conservative Councillors appear to have been caught asleep at the wheel.

Philip has written to the Council asking for the decision to be reversed and making various positive suggestions for restocking the pond, but, predictably, had received no reply when we went to press. The Lib Dems want the lake restocked and intend to take steps after the election to ensure the decision not to restock is reversed by the new Council.