The best things in life cannot always be free: Nicholas Dobson dives into the ruling on a controversial fee uplift at the Hampstead Heath swimming ponds
- The High Court has ruled that the revised charging policy for the Hampstead Heath swimming ponds, which saw increased fees but with concessions, was lawful.
‘Created centuries ago, the Heath’s chain of ponds are one of the sources of the River Fleet that runs subterraneously through London. Swimming in the Ladies’ Pond’s green, silty, silky waters, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that you are moving through history and outside of time.’ So runs the online blurb for At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond by Margaret Drabble and others. And as novelist Esther Freud once wrote in the Financial Times: ‘There is so much space here. So much peace.’
But all was rather less peaceful following a March 2020 price increase. For this ended the self-policing fee arrangements of £2.00 per swim and £1.00 concessionary rate, which had been in place
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