Filton Town Council has voted to introduce charges for the boules court and cycle speedway track in Elm Park, reports the Bristol Evening Post.
An extraordinary meeting of the Council, held half-an-hour before last night’s scheduled regular meeting, considered a proposal from Cllr Teml that users of the boules court be charged £2.50 per person, with £3 per person being asked for cycle speedway practice sessions.
Filton Leisure Centre Manager Lisa Timbrell recommended the Council charge at least £4.20 per person for two hours on the boules courts and charge £15.40 per hour for group bookings of the cycle speedway track.
The meeting had been called following claims that the lack of a charging structure was due to some Labour councillors’ interests in the two sports, including South Gloucestershire ward councillor for Filton, Roger Hutchinson.
The meeting agreed to charge individuals £1.10 per hour for using the speedway track. Group bookings, including cycle speedway events, will be charged at £15.40 per hour, with all day bookings being charged at £123.20.
Boules players will be charged according the number of players taking part: two players will be charged £4.20 each, four players £4 each and six players £3.80 each.
Read more: Fees introduced on boules court and speedway track in Filton
This vote was a victory for residents who had to fight againt South glos labour councillor Roger Hutchinson’s claims that both sports should remain free to use. All other sports ate the leisure centre are charged and about to increase by 5%. Councillor Hutchinson is secretary of the cycle club and captain of the boules team. Many have called this a conflict of interest on a major scale.
Residents are now calling for the resignation of councillor Hutchinson following his laughing at councillors from the public gallery at the meeting. He was reprimanded by Councillor Teml for sniggering at a statement he was making.
Residents said the Filton Labour branch must surely be embarassed and shocked by their secretarys behaviour bringing them into direpute. They also called for labour leader Andy Perkins to act immediately and suspend their member.
We are delighted at the outcome to this matter and will continue to strive for fairness for Filton on all matters such as this.
We condemn all acts by councillors with self interests in hobbies where that they are so closely involved, it clouds their judgement when it comes to important votes.
We joins residents in our delight at defeating the continued quest of the minority to exclude these two sports from charges.
I’d just like to point out that the comments from “Phil Tonne” and “FiltonIndependentParty” came from the same IP address, suggesting that they are one and the same person.
For future reference, anyone making multiple comments on a particular story is asked to use a consistent author name. Thank you.
Ed, thats not strictly correct as a same IP addresses are often used from wifi cafes, bars and libraries for example. It is wrong to assume they are one of the same. In this case it is probably the latter.