Hazel Ball’s Letter to Ben Bradshaw MP
This letter to our MP from the ECC’s Director of Community and Environment, dated 21st May 2007, speaks volumes. Everything seems so logical and accurate until it is counterbalanced by the facts and the views of the Club and Jim. Is a rigorous examination of the situation regarding the Council and the Club being lost in subjectivity? Please reserve judgement until Jim’s response to this letter has been considered. This was sent to Ben, who is kindly acting as intermediary, so that it may be presented to the Director for her earnest consideration and rigorous response to each of the points which are made in Jim’s letter.
Dear Ben
SUMMERWAY TENNIS CLUB
Jim Harle emailed you on 11 May and I thought I would pre-
We have put forward proposals for the club’s continuation at the site, and have made it clear that we can look at the finances to ensure that they are not a problem for the club, but still we have been unable to get any meaningful dialogue about the future. We have asked for the club’s accounts to help us assess the situation, but have not received them. We therefore wrote to the club on 9 May to say that we have had the pavilion assessed and, having found that it is in rather poor condition and it is not viable to convert it to some sort of community use, we will be demolishing it.
There is much said in Jim’s email, and I will pick up just a few of the points:
1 We have not seen a letter from DCC and don’t know why Jim thinks ECC has “suppressed the club’s expansion plans”. Until 2003/04 ECC had more or less no influence over the site. At that time, we approached the club to explain that the adjacent land was expected to become a new public park and so we needed to establish what the club’s aspirations were and sort out how best to accommodate its needs. The opportunity for substantial lottery funding had almost certainly passed at that stage, and we understood that the expansion would not qualify for funding from the Lawn Tennis Association. We felt that the club’s vision of 6 courts there was unachievable, and in any event we were keen to create a new public park to serve the locality. We did not want much of that land to be taken up by tennis courts, the scale of the 2 courts being about right from the park’s point of view.
2 I’m not aware of any questions to which ECC has refused to provide answers, although we have said that we want to deal with other members of the club, who we found to be more concerned with progressing matters for the future, rather than looking to the past. Of course, when the volume and content of information is such as that which has been received from Jim (for example in the various emails to all DCC and ECC councillors others, copied to yourself) it is inevitable that some points will not have been picked up and answered, in some cases deliberately. However, ECC has tried hard to engage the club and work out mutually satisfactory arrangements for the future. In November 2006, following a meeting with some of the club’s committee in their pavilion, we actually thought that the matter had been resolved and that we had more or less reached agreement.
3 The club may have provided its development plans to ECC in 1999, but these would only have become critically relevant to ECC from the leisure development viewpoint when ECC became aware in 2003/04 that it would be taking an interest in the land (following DCC’s suggestion of a land swop deal).
4 As outlined in 2 above, we found we could not make any progress when dealing with Jim, who mostly wanted to revisit the good work done in the past by the club. We have acknowledged this good work many times, and we were of course keen to find a way that such a valuable asset could continue. Given the lack of progress, and indeed the nature of some of Jim’s communications, we tried to engage other members of the club’s committee. See the minutes (attached) of the club’s Committee meeting held on 15 February. It seemed to us that there wasn’t a shred of hope in those minutes that we could reach agreement. Jim has created a website that provides him with the opportunity to give a one sided explanation of the situation, while implying that the Council, its Members and officers have been acting improperly. We now believe that it would not be in the city’s best interests for the Council to enter into any long term formal agreement involving Jim, and that is a pity. We have now come to terms with the outcome being that the courts will be opened for free use by the general public, along with the other 13 free public courts in the city.
5 I am reluctant to provide a list of “similar clubs” as Jim will no doubt go to
whatever level of detail is needed to demonstrate that they are in fact different.
However, there are numerous clubs in the city that we have supported through measures
such as improvement grants and rent support grants (eg canoeing, rowing, sub-
6 ECC has not refused to support its assertions, and nor has it “ducked issues”, but there are probably points raised by Jim that we have not felt are sufficiently relevant to the future occupation of the Summerway premises by the club to be worth pursuing. Indeed, the accusation of ducking issues is an example of where we could get into a fruitless exercise creating ‘circles within circles’ and although Jim makes it clear in his email that he will be “fighting” on, we do not intend to continue with such correspondence.
I cannot think of any way of recovering the situation now that it has reached this stage, but I am aware that at least the club is currently playing weekly at Heavitree Pleasure Ground. I am happy with the way the Council has managed the situation, although it is very disappointing that the club has been unable to agree a constructive way forward. We nevertheless wish the club well with finding a new venue and hope they are able to recover. We will be happy to assist if we can.
Yours sincerely
Hazel Ball
Director Community and Environment
Cc: Portfolio Holder Environment & Leisure, Jim Harle, Members File, General File