The meeting was held at the Methodist Church in Rayleigh. This is one of the smallest venues that has been used. Only about 20 members of the public came. This was lucky, because if 50 had turned up, there wouldn’t have been enough room….
The main subject of the night was supposed to be football pitches near Rayleigh Leisure Centre. But this turned into an anti-climax. We were being asked for our opinion on whether we wanted to lease the land to a junior football club, and if so, which one of the three or four interested clubs we should pick,
However some councillors – including Chris, Jackie and Ron – felt we hadn’t been given enough information. For example – what was the optimum size club for 5 pitches? How good would each club be at managing the land? How would they cope with members of the public wandering on there for a kickaround? How would they try to avoid inconveniencing residents? Would there be evening use?
Chris talked to one of the people from Rayleigh Boys before the meeting. It turned out that he had been reading the comments left here on onlinefocus, and he had ideas on how to address residents’ concerns. Whilst the council thought they could provide 70 parking spaces, he thought a redesign could provide more. He said that they wanted to run a car-sharing scheme, and to invite two residents onto their committee to deal with ‘neighbour’ problems.
This was very interesting stuff to hear, and he had already sent this information to the council. But for some reason the officers didn’t include it in the report for the committee, although they will include it in the report to the Cabinet!
This lack of information made it very hard for councillors to form an opinion on this, so all we did was to raise some points that should be considered. Now the issue moves on to the Cabinet.
PS the big subject at the meeting wan’t football pitches after all, it was a pedestrian crossing. We’ll write more about that tomorrow morning.
I am the founder of Hambro Colts Youth Football Club and would like to air the following thoughts.
We would be happy to take possession of this field on whatever terms the council or Local residents dictate and could assure you that we would be a responsible part of the community we are your local club with many members in and around the area of the pitches and have a proven track record of working with the community. Notwithstanding this it is obvious that some disruption will occur mainly on a Sunday which is matchday but we are not a club who wants 6 teams at each age range and restrict the amount of teams we start to ensure that they are in line with facilities and will not grow much more than 20 teams. We do and would remain training at Rawreth Lane recreation ground and would have very limited weekday usage. We see ourselves as a community club and would not want to cause any undue disruption but being realistic car sharing and any such measures would have limited effect on what is a perennial problem at most sporting venues. I would be more than happy to talk to any residents or other interested parties on the email bob@hambrocolts.co.uk
[NOTE: This has been copied here, for convenience, by the admin from a previous post]
Thank you, Bob, for your comment. It’s useful.