Fields switch to pitch fear

There are fears former school playing fields used as a community sports area may be transferred back to the school.

Southwell Town Council leases Minster Fields, the former playing fields of the Church Street site of The Minster School, from Nottinghamshire County Council.

The town council hoped to buy the site and wrote to the county council and the school, but the school replied saying the area may still be needed as a school pitch.

A fourth pitch is needed because the school does not have enough playing field space for the number of students.

Mr Peter Harris told town council colleagues the lease identified priority use by the school if it needed it.

“The town is committed to providing access for the school rather than cancelling the lease,” he said.

Mr Harris said the fourth pitch was going to be provided through compulsory purchase of land west of the cemetery at the end of War Memorial Drive, but that was not pursued because of technical reasons and a pitch was planned to the south of that land.

A planning application was approved, but the site has not yet been acquired.

“The school is saying the process is so protracted are we ever going to get it?” he said.

Mr Bruce Laughton said he would speak to the strategic property department at County Hall about the issue and that the officer responsible should be asked to attend the next town council meeting.

Mr Peter Pay thought people in Southwell would be disappointed if Minster Fields was lost to them.

He said: “This is something they had been looking forward to. It is another play area and it is another green field people can have access to.

“I think it would be an absolute shame if we were forced down this road and have to relinquish it. The people of Southwell would be very disappointed.”

Mrs Beryl Prentice said with the town council holding the lease the land would be available 52 weeks of the year. She said if the school took over, the field would not be available for everyone.

The school’s executive head, Mr Phil Blinston, told the Advertiser they were as reluctant as the town council to see Minster Fields made into the fourth pitch.

He said: “Our view remains that it’s not viable for the Church Street field to be a pitch to solve our under-sizing of sport pitches.

“We believe it’s not viable but the legal obligation to provide sufficient land is with the county council.”

Mr Blinston said they would like to see the land remain in community use.

He said: “I think the town council and other community sports groups are at one, not on opposite sides with this.

“We all desperately want to see the town council have continuing use, with the community, of Church Street field.”

Mr Blinston said Minster Fields would not be suitable as pitches for the school unless changing rooms and toilets were built there.

A county council spokesman said they were in negotiations with a landowner about another site for the school pitch.

He said they ideally wanted to keep the school on a single site.