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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 19 April 2007

Let dogs get on with their lives

• THE last few weeks have been crazy about innocent dog walkers being banned from enjoying exercising their dogs.
Camden councillors should get out on the streets and parks which are overrun with drunks and drug addicts.
This last week innocent folk and dogs have gone into St George’s Gardens in the afternoon and had to come straight out again.
I and others have counted at least 12 people waiting on drugs arriving, then going in the bushes all around the park to inject themselves.
Of course there were no gardeners in the park, no dog patrol anywhere and no street wardens. So come on Camden, get your priorities right. Sort that lot out and leave the innocent dogs to get on with life.
JANET WOODWARD
Judd Street WC1

• CAMDEN Council’s consultation on its new dog plans ended last week, and a decision will now be made on what to do.
As a dog owner as well as a councillor here, I believe that some of the proposals are too draconian and I’m therefore calling on the executive to drop the most excessive of them.
It is of course reasonable to be able to fine people whose dogs are out of control or foul public areas.
Current legislation allows this, and Camden Council should enforce it. But banning dogs completely from certain areas and insisting that they are on leads in most places is not reasonable.
The idea that you shouldn’t be able to walk more than four dogs at a time is also absurd. The 10 proposed exercise areas are inadequate for Camden’s estimated 22,000 dog population.
That’s why I’m urging the executive to adopt a commons sense approach to this issue, and to avoid heavy-handed and intrusive measures.
We don’t want a dog enforcement regime that resembles the parking enforcement regime.
I hope that the executive will now take a common sense approach – one which allows the council to ensure that dogs do not menace members of the public, but without unnecessarily curtailing dog owners’ freedom.
Cllr CHRIS PHILP
(Con, Gospel Oak)
Parliamentary Spokesman, Hampstead and Kilburn

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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