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Camden’s wall game
• WHY does a council promote children’s sport, then make climbing prohibitively expensive?
My daughter, aged 12, has been going to climbing lessons at Swiss Cottage Centre for a year. The group and the teachers are friendly and supportive, and every week she learns more climbing skills. She enjoys taking exercise and pays the reasonable price of £3.25 for each session. This week she was told that the price of one-off sessions was to be increased to £10.50 – three times the previous price. Without consultation, a new company has been allowed to take over the wall: “Climb London has been brought into GLL to manage the climbing facilities in a more effective and structured way.”
Yet the classes are already effective and structured. The climbing wall at Swiss Cottage is a community facility, built with council taxpayers’ money to benefit the residents of Camden. It looks as if it has been semi-privatised in order to make more profit.
And the children of Camden (who will no longer be able to afford it) will be the ones who suffer.
PENELOPE GIBBS
Lawford Road, NW5
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