Tadley sports clubs to pitch for £48,500

Behind closed doors meeting on developers' funds

Three Tadley sports clubs are to be invited to pitch to the town council for a share of £48,500 developer’s funds, in a meeting to be held behind closed doors.

The three sports clubs, including Tadley Rugby Football Club, Barlows Park and Tadley Calleva Youth Football Club, have all submitted individual grant applications for the cash to Tadley Town Council, which were initially heard at last Tuesday’s recreation and leisure committee meeting, at the town council's offices, in Franklin Avenue.

Tadley Rugby Football Club chairman Roger Moffatt had submitted an application for a total of £25,000 towards the £30,000 cost of extensive levelling and grading work on the Red Lane club’s third pitch, and annual £10,000 maintenance of their other two pitches, along with a £2,000 commercial dishwasher for the kitchen.

Barlows Park – the home of Tadley Calleva Football Club, in Silchester Road – submitted an application split into four stand-alone proposed bids, the first being for six temporary inflatable floodlights, at a total cost of £2,016, plus a storage shed for the floodlights at an additional cost of £289.

The second bid was for improvements to the pothole-ridden access road to the site, at a total cost of £22,500. The third bid by Barlows Park was for a replacement mower, costing £18,000 new or £8,000 secondhand, and their fourth bid was for any sum up to £48,000 towards the £120,000 cost of a full-size artificial turf pitch.

Also staking their claim were Tadley Calleva Youth Football Club, who have applied for £7,548 to install floodlights on the Pineapple playing field, enabling teams to train locally, rather than travel to Basingstoke.

Barlows Park chairwoman Jo Slimin, who is also a town councillor, spoke as a member of the public on behalf of the Barlows Park application, after declaring an interest and prior to leaving the meeting.

Mrs Slimin pointed out Barlows Park was run almost entirely by volunteers, yet had faced a deficit of some £2,000 at the end of the last financial year (2014/15) and that floodlights were needed because parents were not happy that they had to transport their children to Basingstoke for the facility. An application for match funding would be made to Greenham Common Trust.

It was decided to invite all the applicants to a private meeting, at a date to be confirmed, where they could state their case and answer any questions town councillors might have.

Any decision by the town council recreation and leisure committee would then be subject to final approval by the full Tadley Town Council.