|
|
 |
| |
Alliance saved Hampstead hall
• YOUR correspondent of December 7 (Hampstead Town Hall is a great Lottery success) hides behind a cloak of anonymity to make gratuitously offensive and inaccurate remarks about the Heath and Hampstead Society and the local Hampstead community.
Hampstead Town Hall was saved from demolition not by InterChange, but by an alliance of community groups from all over Hampstead led by the Heath and Hampstead Society, the very people the letter writer apparently so despises.
They did so by holding public meetings of the kind that person now seems to object to.
There is no “plotting” or secrecy. Such fevered cloak and dagger imaginings are of a piece with the writer’s desire for anonymity.
Let it be clearly understood that the Heath and Hampstead Society has not made, and has no intention of making, any representations to the Charity Commission on this matter.
The Friends of Hampstead Town Hall emerged from that campaign, and, after discussions with Camden, invited InterChange to join them in a partnership to give the hall new life – as Sue Wilby, the current acting Chief Executive, generously acknowledges in her letter on the same page.
The friends then raised over £300,000 in cash and kind as their contribution to the match funding.
This is a matter of record. As Chairman of the Heath and Hampstead Society at the time and then a trustee of InterChange for 10 years, I have all the papers relating to the dealings with InterChange and the Lottery bid.
What is now needed is not spiteful rants based on misrepresentations of fact, but the sort of positive commitment to work with the local community given by Sue Wilby who graciously acknowledges that more could be done.
We welcome her efforts wholeheartedly and look forward to working with her.
HELEN MARCUS
Chairwoman, Friends of Hampstead Town Hall
|
 |
|
|
|
