Last chance for comments over Herringthorpe Playing Fields

LOCAL residents have asked me to draw reader’s attention to the Public Notice in the back of the newspaper advertising the “Disposal of Open Public Space” on Herringthorpe Playing Fields. This will enable Rotherham Rugby Club Ltd to lease and fence part of

Please take this final opportunity to send your comments to RMBC by February 22. The club’s current home on Clifton Lane isn’t big enough to meet its current ambitions. The proposed development will fulfil its rugby needs and provide obvious benefits for amateur rugby in Rotherham, but to justify this with additional claims that it will meets the wider community and schools needs are misleading.

There is already a purpose-built stadium on the same site which the community can and do use now. It is also available for schools to use. It’s got everything needed by community sport, secure fencing, toilets, changing rooms, ample parking, floodlights and none of the flooding problems of the field. Does the “community” need two developments on the same field, one with ideal facilities and the other without?

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Wouldn’t it be better if everyone got behind a bid to push RMBC to clean it up for all sports and recreational users instead of fencing off a prime section for rugby and leaving everyone else to put up with the dog dirt and bottles etc? We all want to see sports and recreation flourish in a safe environment especially where our children are concerned.

The extension of amateur training and competitive matches to 4pm to 9pm, plus weekends will make our quality of life worse. Parking during evening training is dreadful. We can look forward to all this in addition to Titan match day commotion and the noisy club house functions till midnight at weekends. Attention is diverted away by saying it's only a Titans match day problem. It isn’t. The car parking strategy isn’t fit for purpose.

Rotherham Rugby Club Ltd charge objectors with trying to discredit their application by linking it to the Titans. The fact is that the lease does contain a clause to “allow the facility to be used for training purposes by the Rotherham Titans subject to obtaining lessors ( that’s RMBC) written permission”.

Our concerns are sincere, genuine and most important of all substantiated. The club already has the unswerving support of the council so we can only hope that councillors will consider our views judiciously and equally when making their deliberations.

J Morgan, Herringthorpe Playing Fields Community Group.

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