A long-running battle between family-run cafes and the chains | Letters

I can’t help being disappointed by the current controversy over the Hampstead Heath cafes, as highlighted by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (I’m sick of avocado toast – I just want to keep my local, untrendy cafe, 12 January), as it’s all happened before.

In 2016, as chair of the Hampstead Heath management committee, I voted against the proposal to take the running of the Parliament Hill cafe away from the D’Auria family and hand it to the Benugo chain, but the proposal was initially agreed (albeit by only one vote). There was a predictable outcry against this decision, and I found myself confronted by angry protesters at a meeting chaired by the local MP, Keir Starmer.

At that meeting, I decided not to carry on defending a policy I didn’t believe in, and managed to get the initial decision overturned (and the strength of feeling also led to Benugo pulling out). We brought in a consultant to conduct a full and inclusive consultation, and all the existing leaseholders were left to get on with running the cafes, at least for the time being.

I always knew the subject would come up again as, despite popular belief, the City Corporation’s funds are not bottomless, and the cafes do need to pay their way. But I had hoped that our earlier experience of reversing a controversial policy might have alerted current decision-makers at the corporation to the dangers in allowing financial planners and their spreadsheets to trump every other consideration and that the consultation process we put in place in 2016 might have resulted in permanent improvements in communication and genuine listening to users of the wonderful heath and its unique range of cafes.
Virginia Rounding
Birmingham

How apposite that Ms Cosslett’s article should be published just two days before BBC Radio 4 Extra’s repeat of the 1959 Hancock’s Half Hour episode Fred’s Pie Stall, in which the lads fight against the enforced closure of that Cheam institution. Spoiler alert: Fred ends up selling saveloys and champagne, and builds himself a £10,000 house with the proceeds.
Bill McGinley
Chester

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett rightly highlights the disastrous impact of corporate takeovers of local cafes, not just on Hampstead Heath in London, where four family-owned cafes are being taken over by the Australian-inspired chain Daisy Green, but across the country.

Daisy Green publicly maintains that it’s not a chain, but it has around 20 outlets and an annual turnover of more than £22m. It may not be Starbucks, but it’s still a big corporate, and far from the friendly, family-run cafes that heath users value so highly.

Of course, the major villain is the City of London Corporation, which appears determined to turn the heath from a public benefit into a money-making enterprise, kicking out the family-run cafes as part of a plan to reduce the City’s funding and screw as much revenue as possible out of all those who enjoy the heath, its fresh air, ponds, cafes and health-giving properties. The corporation should be ashamed of itself and Daisy Green should do what another corporate, Benugo, did the last time the City tried this on: walk away from the contract immediately.
Don Keller
Harringay, London