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Sports supremo pitches into park fight
KAREN Buck told the sports minister on Tuesday that Westminster council was more interested in money-making than in its teenagers.
The Labour MP met Gerry Sutcliffe for urgent talks after a bookings fiasco last week saw 400 teenagers barred from the main pitch at Paddington Recreation Ground.
The Unity in the Community football tournament was for the second time in six months wrongly double-booked with Hampstead Hockey Club.
Ms Buck said: “Westminster claims it is increasing participation, but I ask to whom? It is the fee-paying clubs not the local teams who are getting priority on the pitches. I met the sports minister and he has pledged to meet the private contractor to discuss what is going on in Westminster. I will make sure he follows this through because, quite frankly, organised sport is not on offer to local teenagers in Westminster. I also told him that the London Tigers, a brilliant community group, cannot get bookings either. They are playing their home matches in Ealing.”
Cannons Group, the contractor responsible for all Westminter’s leisure facilities, apologised for the “administrative error” and Richard Chapman, club secretary of the hockey team, said: “In 1999 the club paid for an upgrade to the pitch for some security of playing tenure. We are one of Westminster’s very few clubs operating in the top country-wide league of its sport. If the Cannons’ booking error on that day had gone the other way it might have been analogous to Arsenal being asked to postpone an Emirates game.”
A spokesman for Westminster council said: “The mistake was a glitch and we will make sure this does not happen again.” |
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