Penn & Tylers Green hit problems in the dark
From today's Non-League Paper:
"Penn & Tylers Green will be able to remain members of the Hellenic League next season after agreeing to move in with Amersham Town".
"The Spartan South Midlands Division Two outfit have agreed to allow the Division One East outfit to play at Spratleys Meadow next season".
"Penn & Tylers Green were dealt a crushing blow in February when Chiltern District Council's planning committee rejected their application for floodlights, on the grounds that they would impact on nearby cottages".
"The decision means that the club would lose their Step 6 status".
"However, the deal with Amersham will give them a breathing space in which to appeal the decision".
"Penn chairman Tony Hurst said 'By signing this deal we have secured our immediate future at this level whilst we continue our appeal against the recent planning application refusal. We are still bitterly disappointed to receive no support from the Penn Residents Society, parish council or our two local district councillors who chose to support the minority view in the local community' ".
" 'They have forced us to move away from our home of 100 years, added thousands of pounds of additional cost into our budget and threatened the future of a recreational facility at the very heart of our community' ".
Any comments from Wycombe fans living locally? Is this a reasonable refusal or just another example of local councillors treating football at any level with disdain? I wonder what the outcome would have been had it been a rugby club applying for floodlights?
Comments
Knowing the location of the ground, right behind a number of houses, I understand why the application was turned down in the context of the way these sort of things go. Certainly, I could not go with the comments of the chairman as described. There is no threat to the facility insofar as it is used by the many kids who play there and they have not been forced to move away from their home except that they wish to use it in a way it has not been used in 100 years. Sure, if they wish to move into a league that requires floodlights and they can't have them there, the adult team will have to play elsewhere. Perhaps not ideal and certainly not in line with their hopes but c'est la vie, apparently. I really dislike this kind of emotive attempt at trial by media.
Hope they win any appeal.
If you buy a house with a neighbouring football club surely you expect some inconvenience on match days. The floodlights would only be raised on match days, so the additional inconvenience would only be for around 3 hours less than 30 times a year.
I suspect the football ground has been there before some of the houses were even built.
@mooneyman . This argument about pre-existing facilities and rights is often deployed in respect of pubs and loud music. It generally pre-supposes that the purchaser of a property has a surfeit of funds with which to purchase, and hasn't already been forced to compromise in their decision. And very often the scale of activity with the potential to annoy changes over time. As is clear from the original post, the requirement for floodlights is a relatively new one, plenty of people live next to recreational sports facilities which don't have floodlights. This is seemingly driven not by the scope of extra lighting for the community activities but by some aim to climb the football pyramid. I haven't visited the site of the application recently, but there are almost certainly two sides to this debate.
@Baldric - Whilst I take your point, personally it would not unduly bother me having floodlights at a higher level for 3 hours once a week in the football season.
However, at the end of the day the villagers have managed to get rid of the club, which to most, is probably a bonus.
I live across the road from our village sports field, where the village football team play, and there is also a hard court used for tennis, five-a-side etc. The sports field is run by the village council, and the hard court has had floodlights for several years. I live within a 100 yards of the hard court, but as far as I'm concerned the slight cause no nuisance what so ever.
I don't recall the council consulting the residents before installing the lights.
None of us know the full facts here and it is possible that the application will go through on appeal. The lack of support from any community representatives does suggest a level of disagreement which goes beyond the simple issue of floodlights, and the floodlights may just have been the convenient point for protest. Whether objecting to floodlights is a legitimate tactic if the real concern is say congestion, I couldn't say, but the planning authority should consider the merits of the specific case.
The ground lies behind houses in Penn on the main road between Hazlemere and Beaconsfield. It's conjecture, of course, but I would be very surprised if there had not been houses there for many hundreds of years.
I have no first-hand experience of the football club, though friends have sons who play in their apparently healthy colts section. I do have experience of the cricket club which shares the (impressive) clubhouse. There is also a tennis club between the cricket and football pitches with, I think, four courts. From my visits to the cricket club there on many occasions, the place seems a thriving hub of the community. I have no reason to think there would be any widespread desire to get rid of the football club as was suggested above.
I have no knowledge of this application nor any judgement to make of the decision. But I reiterate my opposition to the nature of the comments made by the chairman which seemed hyperbolic and divisive. By all means regret the fact that the application was (apparently) unsupported by the neighbouring community. But it seems shortsighted to bemoan the fact so publicly and disparagingly when he might be better-off thinking about how to change the minds of the people currently opposed to the idea.
Agreed, the use of the phrase "they have forced us to move from our home of 100 years" is simply not true is it. They can quite comfortably stay there, albeit in a lower tier.
All too easy to side with a club when it has no impact on yourself, but if some whopping tall bright lights were suddenly visible in your eyeline every other weekend, I dare say people would suddenly not be so keen.
On the same basis above, I used to live opposite the Nags Head for a few years. It was fine when I moved in, and the then Landlord was great, closing at certain time, no loud music after certain time, reduced priced tickets etc. for local people. Then....he left, and they put another guy in who played VERY loud music until 2am, drug taking and under age drinking were rumoured but not proven. In the end the council shut him down (he was also the guy running the Wycombe Academy which shut down suddenly, and had proposed a couple of festivals that never happened. The point is that if something is fine when you move in then it isn;t a problem, but if it changes and starts affecting your quality of life then you have every right to want to safeguard your home.
Oh dear. 45 mins to get at least 2
Until the planning application is appealed?!
Had a very similar scenario here in Widmer End, with applying for lights for our local tennis club. Difference being it was clearly a case of NIMBYism. As the nearest house was at least a whole cricket pitch & village hall away. Several letters objecting to the application were sent in to the local council. When investigated, it was just a few objectors, all being members of local campaign preservation groups. After we, (as a tennis club), revealed how few people were actually objecting, the planning went through and nobody has been adversely affected by the lights. Sometimes, as a tennis club we found out, these things get blown out of proportion and become very personal!
Wrong thread @Tom!
Hedges divide the residents gardens from the football ground. It might be that the lights themselves are only part of the issue and it's the football baggage that will come with them that is the concern i.e. a lot of shouting and a fair amount of 'industrial' language which is part and parcel of playing or spectating at football matches. Probably not what you want drifting into your front room when you put your feet up in the evening.