Bid to stop sports hub scheme is thrown out
HYNDBURN Council has thrown out a motion calling for a review into its decision to look at the potential use of Higham Playing Fields for a £2million community sports hub.
The Observer revealed earlier this year how Accrington Stanley Community Trust have launched a feasibility study to find a location for the sports hub with the Accrington playing fields earmarked as one of two possible sites.
The council agreed last month to work with the trust to formulate a proposal for the facility, which would include a state-of the-art 4G floodlit pitch, classrooms, a gym and trust headquarters, with the decision being made at a later date.
However Milnshaw ward councillor Malcolm Pritchard said Higham’s was not suitable for the scheme and the council should be ‘maintain it as an informal, publicly accessible field’.
Presenting a motion to a recent council meeting, he said: “We have got other sites in Hyndburn that we could do it on.
“We have got the site next to the playing fields which belongs to the county council, there’s King George’s Playing Fields and there’s Foxhill Bank at Oswaldtwistle. I’m not against it but I am against putting it there. Higham’s Playing Fields must be the most used by children in Hyndburn.”
Coun Pritchard claimed there are ‘strong wishes of local residents’ to retain the fields and cited a 252signature online petition.
But council bosses said some of the sites he proposed were either unavailable of earmarked for other uses and that some petition signatories were from ‘Airdrie, Stoke-onTrent and even Barbados’.
Coun Gareth Molineux told the meeting: “It’s ridiculous for someone who has been crying out for investment in his ward for over a decade to then have a fantastic idea put forward and object against it.”
Coun Ken Moss added: “How can you have a vote on something that is only a proposal, on a lease that hasn’t been agreed, on a study which hasn’t been completed and various other factors with funding that haven’t been finalised yet?
“You have been invited by the Stanley trust on several occasions to meet with them and every single time you have refused or been unavailable.”
Coun leader Miles Parkinson said it was a ‘very aspirational investment’ and ‘something we should be enabling and discussing’.