VANDALS have struck again at Westbury Cricket Club causing damage to the cricket facilities at their ground at the Leighton Recreation Centre.
The club have had one of their sheds broken into, graffiti sprayed on sponsor boards and the £10,000 net system has been damaged. The club has since removed all the benches from the ground to dissuade anti-social behaviour which the club say is often caused by children.
Wiltshire Council owns Leighton Recreation Centre and the surrounding pitch, but the green spaces are maintained by the club which does not receive any outside funding to help with repairs caused by vandalism. The area is a multi-use area that is free for members of the public to use, but the cricket club say they’ve noticed an increase in vandalism by other users of the park.
Club president, Neil Hawker detailed some of the damages, saying, “The brackets that hold up the practice nets have been heavily damaged, and it looks like someone has climbed on top of the fence and broken it that way or they’ve smashed a few too many footballs at the brackets and they’ve fallen off – this will need welding.
“Someone has obviously mis-used the nets, and it feels targeted now; we’ve had so many incidents just this year. They may not have had intentions to cause damage like they have but it’s too late now. We cannot be expected to put right continued vandalism when we do not have the financial capabilities to do so.
“With the advertising boards specifically, we’ve had incidents of club volunteers being verbally abused when they approach the kids doing the damage.”
Is Wiltshire Council trying to sell off the land?
Previously, the club say they used to pay a large fee to Wiltshire Council for use of the field in the cricket season. The area was shared between many sports, including football, and they say that Wiltshire Council was spending a considerable amount of money to pay a contractor to maintain the pitch to allow it to be used all year round.
The club says that when Wiltshire Council put up the price of football at Leighton, they saw less people use the area and this resulted in a loss of income. They say that Wiltshire Council then approached the club and said if they maintained the green spaces throughout the year then they wouldn’t need to pay to play cricket in the summer.
Neil says, “To raise money for this maintenance, we need access to the bar as that’s the main source of income and Wiltshire Council initially agreed to this – only now we find ourselves in a position where we can’t use the bar after 2pm on a Sunday.”
The bar, run by the cricket club, is located inside the recreation centre but this closes at 2pm on a Sunday and the bar has to close at the same time.
Neil continued, “To me, it seems obvious that Wiltshire Council are looking to sell off that land for housing as they are making it increasingly harder for us to run a club out of Leighton. We’ve saved Wiltshire Council money and we’re now suffering for it.
“They’ve reduced the opening hours greatly which will make it very difficult for us to make any money to keep the club going, and they don’t seem to care about vandalism as it seems the best way for us to not pursue an asset transfer. We feel the Wiltshire Council is working against us.”
The club also say there have been incidents where they’ve been denied access to electricity to use a PA system for one of their events, with the recreation centre workers telling them that the Wiltshire Council has denied their request.
Neil added, “The cricket club has had plenty of meetings with Wiltshire Council about how we can go forward, and we need a long-term 25-year lease so we can start applying for grants to really breath some fresh air into the club.
“In the meantime, while this is happening in the background, we have asked if we can put up some CCTV but were told this isn’t a possibility while we don’t own the building due to GDPR.
“We’ve wanted to put a fence up to protect the green space where we play cricket, but just like the CCTV, we are not allowed.”
