As the chairman of Westbury Youth FC, I am writing to express the club's strongest support for the plan to provide Westbury with first-class sporting facilities.

These facilities are desperately needed to rectify the acute shortage of sports pitches and playing fields in the town.

There is an opportunity to meet West Wiltshire District Council's dearth of such facilities via a land swap deal with developers Persimmon.

As the organisation most closely affected by the land swap, as the current tenants of the Redland Lane playing fields, I cannot emphasise enough the need for these new facilities.

The club currently has registered some 300 boys and girls from Westbury and the surrounding area, aged from 6-16 years, on a site that is fit to bursting.

The land swap deal would preserve the green fields to the west of Westbury and provide over 50 acres of all-weather sports, cricket, football and rugby pitches, with associated changing rooms and a club house plus a large area of open parkland for walking and exercise.

This deal is just too good an opportunity to miss and yet WWDC is inserting a clause (Policy H1) in the new district plan that specifically forbids any development outside the town policy limits.

The new district plan is due to be ratified by the district council on April 21. It will then be formal and official policy until 2011 and Westbury can then say goodbye to any new sports fields for at least 10 years.

Can the councillors at West Wilts please tell me why the youth and sports bodies of this town have to be treated so badly?

I also believe that the young boys and girls of Westbury and their families would want to know why their elected representatives propose to condemn them to years of having to use less than ideal facilities.

Tony McDonald

Chairman

Westbury Youth

Football Club