While it is good news that East Sussex County Council has published the draft registers for its common land (The Argus, March 4), one wonders why it has taken so long.

The registers were lost in a fire

in 1993. In 1994, the council obtained a private Act of Parliament to reconstitute them. Despite this, more than eight years later the registers have not been finalised.

The result is that common land has not been included on the access maps and the public will be denied a right of access to those commons that are not otherwise shown on the maps as heath or down. We shall not gain access to that land by right until the maps are reviewed at some indefinite future date.

The council's Act of Parliament cost thousands of pounds of ratepayers' money, yet they, and others, have lost out because of the council's sloth.

-Kate Ashbrook, General Secretary, Open Spaces Society, Bell Street, Henley-on-Thames