THERE is a ‘desperate need’ for an all-weather 3G football pitch in Okehampton to get youngsters in the town being more active, town councillors have been told.

Councillors were asked to give their blessing for the project, which will also include an athletics track, at a meeting of the parks committee on Monday night.

Representatives from Okehampton Argyle Football Club, Okehampton College and Okehampton Sports and Skills Trust all spoke in passionate defence of the proposal for Simmons Park.

They said the pitch, which they plan to build with significant help from a local benefactor at a total cost of more than £1-million, would put an end to teams being stopped from playing on waterlogged pitches.

However the council, which owns the land where the pitch will be built, deferred making a decision to take legal advice.

Concerns were raised about high fencing around the pitch, the fact that it would mean another area of the park being fenced off from the wider community and floodlighting.

Okehampton College headteacher Derrick Brett told councillors that the pitch would be ‘a godsend’ to the school, which would use the facility,

’We haven’t been able to get out onto the sports field since the end of November. At the moment in school they are so hemmed in,’ he said. ‘They can cope with that for a month but we have had four months of that and it has a bad effect on behaviour and attitude among the students. They need to be active.’

‘My feeling is a facility like this, particularly the way this is being built, would be a godsend to the college, not just in terms of developing the sport elite but also in terms of getting our school students out and about and playing in the winter months, when this winter they haven’t been out on the fields since November.’

He also spoke in support of the proposal for a 400-metre athletics track which will loop around the football pitch, saying there was a big need for the track as the college’s own was only 200-metres long, and ‘grassy and undulating.

‘A facility like this would be absolutely fantastic,’ he said. ‘Both for the college and for athletics in the town.’

Steve Madge, who manages Okehampton Argyle Football Club’s youth teams, is backing the facility as somewhere where his young players could train on winter evenings.

‘We run groups for children from six to 18 years, with approximately 20 to 25 children in every age group. It is extremely important to get kids out playing and away from their Xboxes.

‘I run the Under 14s side and since November we have only been able to play two matches, because of the weather. Kids can lose interest if they are not getting to play. By being able to guarantee that they can play every week it keeps them doing it and keeps them out of trouble.’

Time is of the essence for the project, the backers say, because a local benefactor is contributing to equipment and materials to build the 3G pitch, an offer which will only be open until October. Funding will also be sought by the college from a central Government funding pot.

Over the past wet winter, teams from Okehampton Argyle Football Club have been playing at the Ashbury 3G pitch four miles away. The new pitch, to be built by the same contractors to the same specification, will guarantee that they can play all their games on the same pitch. With a special springy surface, it is ideal for playing football and rugby, which the current all-weather pitch in the park is not.

The plan is to build the 3G pitch where the grass football pitch is now, displacing it on the same site. It will also be fenced. However, councillors raised concerns about whether the project would restrict the wider community’s access to this part of Simmons Park.

Cllr Terry Cummings said: ‘This is an open community facility for everyone and you are effectively going to be fencing off a third of what is there and prevent people from going onto the football pitch in the summer.

Committee chair person Christine Marsh took up the point, saying: ‘With the existing all-weather pitch, there is a certain amount of time when if people want to play football, and there is no one using it at that time, they can go on it and play. Would they still be able to do that on the 3G pitch?’

Mr Courtney said he had ‘no problem with that’. However, the site would be fenced off (to a height of 12ft), it was established, because fencing was now a requirement of the school inspection body Ofsted.

Cllr Bob Rush said the high fence around the all-weather pitch in the park at present, used for hockey and other court sports, ‘looked like a remand centre’. He also criticised the floodlighting on the pitch.

‘Anyone who wanders up there after dark when there’s been a match can hear the birds singing. There is a disturbance to the ecology which we should be minimising.’

Mr Courtney said the plan was to use LED lights around the new 3G pitch, which has a special springy surface suitable, like those currently used on the pitch at St Joseph’s School in Launceston, to ‘minimise bounce’ of the light.

Councillors are also concerned about the long-term costs of maintaining the facility, which does wear out in time. However, the backers say this will be paid for through income from the site, with bookings to be managed as with all the sports pitches by the Okehampton Community Recreation Association (OCRA).