Coram’s Fields

• IN his letter (We need our community’s support during these difficult times, February 25), Coram’s Fields CEO Stuart Woods fails to mention that Coram’s are under obligation to keep a pitch available for children, even after general playground closure.

Clearly this promise will be broken and the free pitch removed if Coram’s were to start operating a “pop-up pub” for adults.

For a couple of years now Coram’s have already been restricting normal dawn-to-dusk opening hours to close early for children.

This creates more time for adults. This pub initiative is only a further incentive in the same direction.

Coram’s Fields User Group have a good reason to be sceptical about Mr Woods’s responses. Let us remind the public of a few facts.

While proclaiming poverty, the wage bill in Coram’s Fields has exploded out of all proportions, growing by 80 per cent in the last seven years.

The investment in the park hovers at zero and children’s use of the playground is continuously eroded. The rental income is used solely to support wage growth.

New rental policies are created that seem to segregate or remove children from the park. Certain age groups of children are banned all together.

This Covid-19 period was a rare exception, with Coram’s Fields actually being full of children.

The management is holding the playground as a hostage, announcing to the world: “The future of our playground is in danger”!

In CFUG’s opinion the only danger to Coram’s Fields is in fact such management.

The management is suffocating the life of the playground by ruthless focus on adult rental. The betrayal of the trust deed is both mindless as it is heartless.

Coram’s Fields is a children-only park. It is a historic gift to the children of London, regulated by an unequivocal trust deed.

The continuous grave breaches of the trust deed by this management have forced us to submit a detailed complaint to the Charity Commission, asking for an independent investigation.

CORAM’S FIELDS USER GROUP
STARR COTTRELL
Acting Chair
VELJKO ZIZIC
Secretary
DR SNEŽANA PEJIĆ
DR JULIAN FULBROOK
MARIANNA SEGATO
CHARLIE HYMAN
Chair in Absentia