Exploiting Hyde Park
From Nicholas Goodison
Sir: It was refreshing to see Olivia Glazebrook’s beef about the misuse of Hyde Park (Diary, 21 January). It should be a park at all times and not a venue for events. The excellent review of the royal parks some years ago by Dame Jennifer Jenkins underlined their very special importance as ‘countryside in the city’. Large-scale events are the complete antithesis of this principle. The barriers put up to accommodate them exclude ordinary users of the park from a very large area of Hyde Park for most of the best weeks of every summer, thus denying Londoners and visitors the delights and tranquillity of the rare countryside that make London such an attractive city. When the events are dismantled they leave the grass severely scarred and damaged.
The problem, like so many of our problems, lies in the Treasury. The royal parks are underfunded despite the huge surplus that the Treasury reaps from the Crown Estates. So the Royal Parks Agency uses Hyde Park for fund-raising events to help pay for the upkeep of all the royal parks.
Nicholas Goodison London W1
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