• HAMPSTEAD Heath and its ponds, with their long-standing, pleasurable associations, had always been a much favoured amenity for Londoners to enjoy to the full in many different ways.

It was Margaret Thatcher, when she abolished the Greater London Council, who handed them, as a free gift, to the City of London Corporation, a wealthy finance firm with no experience of local government.

The whole problem with Hampstead ponds at present is their current management by an unelected and unaccountable company that does, however, have assets of over £2.5milliard to make the improvements to the men’s bathing pond that are needed in terms of use and capacity but will not do so.

The hard concrete area needs to be grassed over so that it is more accommodating and there is great potential for enlargement by clearing the unused shrubland that at present surrounds it.

Instead of being a place of welcome that formerly it had always been it has now become more like a fortress with an ever-present uniformed guard who controls entry, which in itself has to be pre-booked and paid for online.

The men’s pond should, like the two other ponds, be returned to the public, where an elected body that is accountable, listens to, and can respond to, popular need and become again the much-loved facility that it always formerly was where the traditional naturist sunbathing, can once more be freely enjoyed.

JOHN McPARTLIN, N2