• A BIT late in the day, but could I please add my tuppenny worth to the debate over charging for the ponds? (Confirmed: Compulsory charges WILL be introduced at Hampstead Heath swimming ponds, March 13).

I think that one avenue that has not been explored is why the City corporation feels that individual parts of Hampstead Heath need to be profit-making.

If more than 600,000 visits are made to the ponds each year, then there must be many millions of visits from people other than swimmers made to the Heath.

There is a colossal rubbish clean-up every evening in the summer months, entailing vehicles to suck the rubbish out of the few bins and many rangers picking up rubbish manually.

Yet there is no suggestion there should be an entry fee for visitors to the Heath, nor of fencing it in, nor of contracting additional rangers to police it and enforce charging.

The cross-country runners – often coming to London from places in the open countryside – regularly tear up the Heath, leaving scars that scarcely heal before the next run.

All these need to be fenced off and reseeded or returfed, but there is again no suggestion that the runners should be individually charged for their sporting events. The same applies to the bespoke playing fields for rugby practice, etc, near the athletics track.

The individual users are not asked to pay for the damage to the turf. Turf, incidentally, which I thought was all supposed to be natural heath / downland, set aside for the free enjoyment of all, but managed by the City of London Corporation.

So why do the ponds have to be profit-making, while other areas of the Heath are sadly out of control and loss-making?

Perhaps one potential solution to the overall Hampstead Heath funding issue would be to institute on-the-spot fines for littering, thus killing two birds with one stone.

ROBIN MACKAY MILLER
Constantine Road, NW3