The Council is to consider next week a  plan to spend £400,000 providing new football pitches for a team based in Bishopthorpe.

Good luck to “Bishopthorpe White Rose Football Club”. We wish them success.

However the Councils claim that this project will replace the football pitches, on which they hope to build, at Lowfields is complete “tosh”

The Tadcaster Road site (behind the London Bridge Service Station) is 3 miles from Lowfields. There is simply no way that Lowfields residents – old or new – would regard Sim Balk Lane as a convenient alternative for any kind of local leisure facility.

The truth of the matter is that the Bishopthorpe Football Club’s needs have grown over the years and they have (rightly) approached the Council for help. It is a coincidence that the Lowfields project came along at the same time.

The Council is being duplicitous in linking the two projects.

If a section Section 106 contribution towards sports facilities is available, then the £400,000 should be spent in the Westfield area. Last year, when the Executive first hatched its plan, they were talking about providing the current users of the pitches (Woodthorpe Wanderers) with new facilities. That idea seems to have been quietly forgotten.

Better still, the Council should leave the existing Lowfields pitches alone. Such a decision would be in line with the decision taken at the last Executive meeting which agreed to review open space provision in the City.

The plot hatched by Council officials is aimed at persuading Sport England to remove their blocking objection to the current Lowfields Planning application.

The Executive is also due to consider borrowing around £9 million to build houses on the Lowfields site(!) More about this later.