Michael Phelps during advertising shoot on diving board in 2008

• AS diving is an ill-advised activity for old men with dodgy legs, I have no personal interest in the former diving board of the Men’s Pond (Dig deep? City needs £10k to bring back diving board, August 10).

But other Londoners have long loved the thrill of its bounce as it hurled them upwards against gravity and then, with it, into the watery depths.

Such a simple joy for the younger hard working men of London, in this age of new economic inequality and working stress for many industrious people – some in the City of London, the source of much of the City of London Corporation’s vast property wealth.

The various custodians of Hampstead Heath in good times and bad, during booms, recessions and war, have happily provided a simple diving board as a perfectly reasonable and enlivening part of a visit to the Men’s Pond.

First the Metropolitan Board of Works, then the London County Council, the Greater London Council and, most recently, the corporation; they have all accepted the social desirability of the principle of a joyful dive or two – except that the City now seems to have broken ranks with such an admirable, civic, tradition.

The issue making otherwise reasonable men angry, is that the one and only diving board on the jetty, only a few feet above the water, was taken away some time ago at the behest of the corporation to shoot an advertising commercial for a breakfast cereal company. The diving board subsequently sustained irreparable damage, attributable to that commercial arrangement.

As the shooting was done on the instructions of the Heath’s management in return for a fee, no doubt, one might reasonably think that the City would automatically replace it. It seems they have signalled no intention of doing so, unless the swimmers pay for it, in a surprising and regrettable reversal of long-standing policy.

Given the social and health benefit, small capital cost and the normally low operating cost of a single, no-frills, diving board it seems truly bewildering and niggardly. They seem to have miraculously turned the absence of a diving board into a springboard of discontent by appearing to put commercial interest above traditional social values.

ROBERT SUTHERLAND SMITH
Chairman, United Swimmers Association of Hampstead Heath