Council shame over the state of football ground

I WAS compelled to take an action I never dreamt would be necessary last week – reporting West Berkshire Council to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) about the risk to public safety on a council-owned and managed property.

It has come to this state simply because WBC has failed in its obligations to undertake basic maintenance and to keep the football ground in Faraday Road safe and secure.

This has resulted in a totally dilapidated and rubbish-strewn site that, due to broken fencing, allows anyone, including children, access into the football ground and its tall metal floodlights, abandoned, vandalised and fire-damaged buildings and the debris left from the removal of the main spectator stand.

Of course, up until June 2018 the football ground was safe, secure and fully operational.

This was before the council evicted its rent-paying tenants and locked the community out.

By doing this the council took over direct and sole control for the ground and since then it has maliciously, and many say deliberately, left the once proud ground (which the FA in 2017 said was one of the top three pitches in the whole of Berks and Bucks) to decay into the sorry and unsafe state it is in today. The ground should have protection as it is an official West Berks Council ‘asset of community value’, but the council seem to be hell-bent on destroying the ground long before an alternative facility has been identified or Newbury Community Football Group’s planning application to redevelop the ground has been finalised.

As a good citizen, I emailed every single West Berks councillor to notify them of the risk to public safety and a week later the ground has still not been made safe or secure.

However, a few days ago I did receive a response from councillor Woollaston (executive portfolio: public health and community wellbeing, leisure and culture) stating: “We have already taken the decision to demolish these buildings.” But in December 2018 at a council executive meeting, councillor Hilary Cole committed funds to re-open the ground to the community by “making fully secure the old clubhouse and ancillary buildings associated”.

Clearly we can no longer trust what our elected councillors promise anymore. There will no doubt be some rhetoric of

“commercial viability”, but destroying something simply to try and pretend it’s too hard to fix is a cynical and shameful act of what could be described as corporate vandalism and is fast becoming a farce as we move from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Hold your heads in shame West Berkshire Council.

LEE MCDOUGALL

Newbury