Residents celebrate saving Laurel Park from 3G football pitch plans
RESIDENTS gathered in Laurel Park on Sunday to celebrate the end of plans to build a 3G football pitch on the green space.
They heard speeches from resident John Bland, Earley Environmental Group’s Bob Collis, Maiden Erlegh Residents’ Association (MERA) Colin Mair, as well as local councillors Pauline Jorgensen and Clive Jones. Wokingham borough Council leader John Halsall told residents that while he was leader, the land would be protected from development.
Speaking to Wokingham Today, Cllr Halsall said that the consultation over plans for a possible 3G pitch at Laurel Park led to a “politically engineered debate”.
Cllr Halsall sent a letter to Lower Earley residents late last month pledging not to build the pitch on Laurel Park in Earley. It came after residents raised questions about the proposal during February’s meeting of the council.
“Wokingham Borough Council listens to all our residents,” he wrote, adding that no formal decision had been made on the plan, but would be “after consideration of an options analysis at a future executive meeting, after a full consultation with residents”.
He added that the site was proposed by the Berks and Bucks Football Association with funding coming from the Football Foundation, but the council felt “this site is not suitable and therefore (plans) will not be progressed by this administration”.
Other sites, including Maiden Erleigh School or Reading FC’s training grounds at Bearwood, would now be considered.
“If these are not feasible, then maybe there is no suitable site in Lower Earley,” he wrote.
Cllr Halsall told Wokingham Today – and restated during his speech to Laurel Park area residents – the plans had been put to Earley Town Council.
“The leader of the town council was enthusiastic about this proposal,” he said. “The
first thing I knew of it was a whole series of people going at me with a pitchfork. They were objecting to a decision which they’d been told had been made and which was never made.
“There is a process to making better decisions, you can’t shortcut that process.
“The level of investigation which had gone on was suggesting that Laurel Park would have been a difficultly.
“As a borough council, we were coming to the conclusion that we would have to disappoint Earley Town Council in that we weren’t going to put a 3G pitch in at Laurel Park.
“I’m very surprised that the Earley Town Council changed its position.”
However, Cllr Clive Jones, leader of the town council and Wokingham Borough Council Lib Dem leader, disputed Cllr Halsall’s version of events.
He said that Earley Town Council’s Amenities & Leisure Committee met on January 12, where they heard concerns from the Maiden Erlegh Residents Association (MERA). These including parking, light pollution, noise pollution, and usage of the field in the evenings, but the council did not vote in its favour.
The minutes to this meeting state: “The town council was therefore unable to express a view but its Planning Committee would debate any planning application if one was submitted to Wokingham Borough Council.”
Cllr Jones also said that a meeting of Wokingham Borough Council’s ruling executive last June saw them approve the plans for the Laurel Park pitch.
The minutes for this meeting show the executive approved “a new 3G pitch and additional car parking located at Laurel Park, subject to funding and planning, and borrowing of £300k to be self-financed by project”.
“The Conservatives haven’t been straightforward on this,” he said.
On Sunday, Cllr Jorgensen told Wokingham Today that the executive meeting decision was approval to investigate the pitch proposal, rather than a firm commitment – anything else would have had to have gone through the planning process.
“I found out just before Christmas, when John Bland contacted me, that someone was measuring up the park and checking out for floodlights,” she said. “I spoke to residents and got a feeling for what they were thinking. The majority raised issues of traffic, and being on the periphery of the nature reserve.”
She said that her gathering of this evidence was enough for Cllr Halsall to halt the proposals, and it was an example of how the council listened to residents.
“The whole point of councillors is they represent the residents, we shouldn’t be telling them what to do, they should be telling us what they want.”