‘Confusion’ about plan to make Whitby 3G pitch a community asset leads to second delay by council

At an extraordinary meeting of Whitby Town Council on Tuesday February 13, councillors decided to defer plans – for an application to register the town’s 3G pitch as a community asset – by another two months.

The council had been recommended to refuse the application to register the pitch at Eskdale School as an asset of community value (ACV) but following interventions from members of the public, councillors said they needed more information.

Plans to register the pitch as an ACV were first postponed by an objection from Whitby Town FC in January.

If the application was to be approved, the owners wishing to sell the sports pitch would have to wait six months for people to put together a bid to purchase it on the open market.

Coun Asa Jones said: “There seemed to be quite a lot of confusion about what exactly was being decided at Tuesday’s meeting.”

He added: “The reality is that by making the pitch an asset of community value the only change is that if the pitch was ever put up for sale, the town council or more likely a community group would have extra time to prepare an application to purchase the asset.”

A council report prepared for the meeting said that, following a consultation with other interested groups, it was established that there was “no declared threat to the facility”.

“North Yorkshire Council as the landowner is committed to the Community Use Agreement governing the 3G pitch as a condition of the funding secured from the Football Foundation,” the report said.

Coun Jones told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that “complications” had arisen regarding Whitby Town FC’s difficulty accessing the pitch as well as questions about the defined area of the ACV if it were approved.

He said: “While I voted against delaying the process to submit the ACV application, the decision was ultimately taken to delay decision-making for a further two months in order to answer the many questions surrounding the 3G pitch which are currently unanswered.”

If town councillors approve the application at a future meeting, it will be submitted to North Yorkshire Council for a final decision.