IN response to Francis Weeks' letter (Parking charges essential to underpin Queenswood future, Readers' Times, November 5), regarding justification of car park charges at Queenswood and Bodenham Lake, already two of the original four rangers have been made redundant, leaving just two to run the site.

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust and New Leaf have teamed up after New Leaf drafted HWT in because they could not show autonomy from Herefordshire Council which is a prerequisite of the handover of the community asset transfer.

As I understood the community asset transfer process, it was to empower local people to take charge and run places like Queenswood with the key word being volunteering. Many local people have already volunteered their time for free.

From the information shown by HWT and New Leaf at their public consultation in April it looks like two paid directors and two paid managers are being employed before employing rangers.

No wonder it takes £150,000 to run the sites. Furthermore, there is no mention about using wood from coppicing to make gates, fence posts or garden furniture that could be sold to raise cash, or to stop buying in truckloads of wood chip instead of recycling that from on-site tree surgery.

It looks to me like a top-heavy management are stripping funds before the real work is done by volunteers. I'm quite happy to support community-led ventures in Herefordshire as long as they are not managed by people who expect a going rate of £50,000 a year to direct the process when the average director in the private sector is on £35K.

My family home has been at the bottom of Queenswood since 1978 and we have seen the current rangers do a grand job with a fraction of the budget HWT suggest.

Car park charges at £1 per hour only deter people from visiting. There again, perhaps that is the point! With fewer people there would be less real work to do and more money left from grants for wages.

WILLIAM LLOYD Address supplied