Not good news to report. I’ve just been at a meeting of Manchester Council’s Neighbourhood and Communities Scrutiny Committee, which was considering the issue of leasing a part of Heaton Park to Goals Soccer Centre PLC for a commercial soccer centre.

Regrettably the decision made by Manchester’s Chief Executive has been upheld, and the lease to GOALS looks set to go ahead.

The decision to lease the land to GOALS was made by Manchester Council’s Chief Executive before Christmas. Councillors can “call-in” a decision, which means that it needs to be considered by a meeting of a “Scrutiny Committee” Liberal Democrat councillors in Manchester, concerned that the soccer centre was in the wrong place had ‘called the issue in’, and today was the consideration of that issue.

Here are the papers for the meeting.

As a Councillor from an affected ward, the Chair of the Committee had kindly allowed me to address the meeting, even though I’m a Councillor in a different authority. I was joined by a good number of local residents from the St Margaret’s area – those who’d been able to make it to a meeting in the day.

Our issue in Prestwich with the proposal has always been that this is a brilliant idea, in the wrong place. A development of this kind – c 18 artificant soccer pitches, plus tennis courts, a club house and over 80 car parking spaces – is an excellent facility, but not at the expense of open parkland and NOT in a quiet residential area already suffering from excessive traffic and parking from park users who arrive by car.

But this meeting wasn’t about the planning permssion (granted last year), but about the lease of the land. We had two main concerns about the proposal:

– we don’t believe that the case has adequately been made to make a to take away such a beautiful piece of parkland, and turn it into a commercial soccer centre. My view is that parkland is precious, its very rare that nay new pieces of parland are created, so we should guard what we have carefully.

Research undertaken by local residents showed that there are 73 other 5-a-side soccer pitches within 10 miles of Heaton Park of a standard at least as equal to that proposed by GOALS. There’s a list here. I am not convinced that there is any sort of lack of capacity for this sort of facility in this area.

We’re also not convinced that all other options for a site for this facility have been considered. As I pointed out this is actually a very poor site to provide a service to residents of the north of Manchester City Council. To get to the St Margaret’s corner of the park (apart from walking through the park – not possible at night!) you need to travel through Bury Council for over a mile by either tram, car or bus. Surely somewhere more apporpriate can be found for such a facility if there is a demand in northern Manchester?

Much was made of the 60% of the time at the Soccer Centre which will be available for Manchester and Bury schools and community groups. Don’t get me wrong this is a brilliant opportunity but we shouldn’t misunderstand what this provision is. My understanding is that this will be on the whole times during the school day, and outside those times people will have to pay to use the facilities. I don’t know what GOALS will charge for the Heaton Park site but I understand it to be £30-40 an hour to hire a 5-a-side pitch.

– we’re concerned that the decision to make the lease has been made whilst the planning decisions are being investigated by the Local Government Ombudsman. Local residents from the St Margaret’s area have made a complaint to the Ombudsman about the processes in the planning decision made by Manchester City Council. The complaint has been submitted by the Ombudsman to the Council who responded before Christmas, but the Ombudsman is still considering the response and the issues it addresses.

Scrutiny isn’t meant to be a party political process. But once again I witnessed Manchester Councillors divide on party political grounds. Three Liberal Democrat councillors voted to send the issue back for further consideration; but they were voted down by 7 Labour councillors who voted to go ahead with the lease.

For me its a terrible shame. A beautiful piece of open parkland will be lost forever, and a quiet corner of Prestwich will be changed forever with a major sports complex just over the fence.

A great idea in the wrong place, and a very sad day for Heaton Park.

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