This thoughtful paper written for HorNet by one of its members gives new insights into the role of councils in choosing the private estate model, and more importantly, suggests other ways in which councils can fund the public open spaces we are so unfairly paying for.
This is a revised paper. The original suggested that councils had flexibility over raising funding for estate maintenance under the Localism Act, but unfortunately this is not the case. They could however use council tax to raise funds.
