A WEST Wales football club, running from more than 150 years, seeking permission for a storage facility so it can look after its only asset, its pitch, has been turned down for a second time.
In an application to Ceredigion County Council planners, Robert Davies of Cardigan Town Football Club sought permission for a wooden storage shed at the King George VI playing fields, Cardigan for pitch maintenance equipment.
The club, established in 1870, has no clubhouse or other means of storing the equipment.
A previous application for a steel container was refused late last year, with the later application effectively a resubmission, this time for a wooden building.
A supporting statement by Mr Davies, a sponsor and committee member of Cardigan Town FC, said: “The club was formed in 1870 and has played on the King George since the facility was created for the town and has taken great pride in looking after the football pitch which serves its senior and junior sections with over 140 members. This success in turn has created its own problems in being able to look after our only playing pitch by means of fertiliser and nurturing and cutting the grass.
“To continue to do this the club is investing in a ride-on mower and roller with air spikes to help keep the pitch in the best condition possible, hence our need to store this equipment in a safe place away from the general public and harm.”
The previous application was refused on the grounds “of imposing an industrial element within a prominent green space within Cardigan town, as well as for the principle of developing upon green space located away from any existing built form, serviced by no roads nor footpaths”.
After the initial application for a steel storage unit was refused, Robert Davies, in a subsequent application, said it hoped the amendments were “a solution to please everybody and more importantly enabling our football club, somewhere at last, to store valuable and much needed equipment to secure the long-term future of the club”.
It added: “To survive we have to utilise and look after what we have, our pitch, and to do that we need a facility to store equipment, so yet again we are asking for everybody’s support in our application.
“We represent the town of Cardigan in football, our volunteers give invaluable time and effort in helping the younger generation play sport, we need everybody’s support in helping us to achieve this, our local council, our planning department, local residents, help us move forward as a club by supporting our application for somewhere at last we can call our own and store much-needed equipment.”
An officer report, recommending refusal, said the latest design was “of a far more expected nature” but was still against policy “in that the emplacement of a lone structure far devolved from any nearby built form lends the proposal to being one unsympathetically and insensitively sited within the landscape and further fails to harmonise with the landscape and the layout of the landscape”.
The application was refused by planners on that ground.
