Zac Goldsmith has pledged to look into the Lee Valley park tax if elected Mayor of London.
In April, Your Local Guardian as well as the Richmond and Twickenham Times, and the Surrey Comet, relaunched its No to the Lee Valley tax campaign, seeking to end the subsidy paid by south London boroughs to the park in north London every year.
Now, Mr Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for Mayor, has promised he will “look again” at how the park is funded.
Mr Goldsmith said: “If I am elected Mayor of London I will listen to the residents of South London and look again at how Lee Valley Park is funded. “My Conservative colleague Steve O’Connell, GLA candidate for Sutton and Croydon, has done great work in raising the prominence of this issue in the last few years.
“Supporting local communities is vital if we are to keep our economy strong.
“The Lee Valley Park, set up in 1966, is a 10,000 acre park running through north east London, Essex and Hertfordshire and is the capital’s largest park, four times the size of Richmond Park.
Since it was created Sutton, Croydon, Merton, Wandsworth, Richmond and Kingston boroughs have all paid an annual levy to the park authority to maintain it.
In 2016/17, Wandsworth Council will pay £359,235.36, Croydon will pay £336,552.84, Kingston will pay £172,414.92, Richmond £247,862.76, Merton £203,788.80 and Sutton £201,623.64.
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