Crowland community gym and sports hall project gets important boost

During a virtual meeting on Monday, parish councillors were told that part of the project would be funded by a £50,000 grant from Lincolnshire County Council, with other cash coming from developers' payments as a condition for building new housing in Crowland.

Coun David Kempton, parish council chairman, said: "There are large areas of the facility that are derelict and there's an opportunity to refurbish them and create a community gym.

"It's too good an opportunity for us to ignore but the running costs of the facility are significantly greater than the income.

"So we want to establish a charitable trust that we can hand over the day-to-day running of the facility to.

"There's money of up to £50,000 from the county council that's available for the conversion of the gym and it's been confirmed that we can use it to do the work.

"But we have to spend it by the end of the financial year or potentially lose it."

Along with the refurbishment project, an appeal for volunteers to become trustees of the gym and sports hall is also to be made.

"We need to get more outside help from people to run the facility because we don't want to spend the money, only to find that we can't run it," Coun Kempton said.

"The timeline is ambitious, but it's do-able and once we've got the designs for the gym, we can go out and get quotations from contractors.

"Then we can get someone lined up who can do the work at a conservative price and within the timescale, with an opening date of May 2021."

Juniors football club to hold talks over hire charges

Crowland Juniors Football Club officials are to have talks with parish councillors about the cost of hiring the town's Snowden Playing Fields for training sessions and matches.

Concerns that the club, which runs under-seven to under-16 teams, have been paying more for using the pitch, changing rooms, toilets and kitchen than they should were raised at Monday's meeting.

Using 2019-20 rates, the cost of hiring Snowden Field and its facilities for two hours was between £17.13 and £29.94 for junior teams, compared to prices between £23.64 and £40.98 for adults.

Coun Reg Boot said: "I have a long history of being involved with the juniors football club and the parish council.

"AlI the juniors really require are the pitch, changing rooms and toilets, so I don't think we can justify the amount we're charging them.

"I'm sure the club is financially well off, but it's question of what it's teams are using and if they are being charged for using only part of the facilities, I think it's a bit short-sighted."

Parish council vice chairman Coun Bryan Alcock said: "There seems to be a difference of opinion as to what combination of facilities the club wants to use.

"The only way out of it is to find out what combination the club actually wants and then come up with a rate for that.

"But it's up to the council to decide the rate and whilst we all agree that we want to support the youngsters in their activities, the council has to square its budget as well.

"There's going to be a cost and what that cost will be is something we need to find out over the next week or two."

West Street toilets reopened to the public

Crowland's West Street toilets have been reopened to the public on weekdays, with a cleaning routine in place twice a day.

The toilets had been close since March to protect parish council workers from possible infection with coronavirus.

But Coun Graham Searle, safety and security committee chairman, said: "We've organised for the opening, closing and cleaning of the toilets, with the hours of opening agreed with the parish council chairman.

"The idea was to clean the toilets before we reopened them, which we did, and we've put up COVID-19 signs that are required too.

"We've increased the cleaning from once a day to twice a day which we felt was adequate for the amount of use.

"But we're waiting for the arrangements to be finalised for weekends so we can complete a risk assessment for the toilets.

"We're maintaining them and believe we're doing what we should be doing."

Concern over state of trees along Gravel Causeway

A plea for county highways managers to look at the safety of trees by a popular picnic and dog walking spot next to the River Welland is to be made.

Concerns about fallen branches in Gravel Causeway were raised by Coun Graham Searle who said: "There are quite a lot of branches hanging from the tress and lying by the side of the road.

"Some of the trees do look to be in a poor condition and quite dangerous, rotten at the bottom, and the county highways team should really do a survey on them and take some action."

Fly-tipping fears put stop to plans for re-siting bin

An idea to put a bin at the junction of Harvester Way and Crease Drove has been turned down over fears about fly-tipping.

Planning committee members had proposed that a three-month trial of re-siting the bin should take place.

Coun Cathi Elphee, committee chairman, said: "We've had a problem in quite a lot of out-of-town locations of not just casual waste, but residential, picnic and dog waste being left there.

But Coun Jan Woodroffe said: "If we do put a bin there, we'll be opening ourselves up to more fly-tipping by saying 'leave you rubbish here'.

"I think it's too far out of the centre of Crowland and I don't agree there should be a bin in that area."

Billing time for tenants of James Road allotments

Allotment holders in Crowland will soon be receiving their rent bills for the year.

Parish councillors hope to find out how many plots at the James Road site, which opened in May 2019 , are still vacant for prospective new tenants to take up for rent.

Coun Jon Boor, farms and gardens committee chairman, said: "We hope to get started on letting some of these allotments that are vacant and send out the invoices so we know how many we've got left going forward."