ONLINE POLL: New row between Berry Hill Park and Harriers AC

NNAC12-1500-1 Mansfield Berry Hill Park

Published on 13/10/2012 10:41

MEMBERS of Mansfield athletic club the Harriers faces an uncertain future after being told by Berry Hill Park’s trustees its Thursday training session has been cancelled.

Harriers’ chairman, Paul Gair, was given the news by Berry Hill Park Ltd’s secretary Ray Jackson-Smith on 27th September - just one week before.

The move means youngsters who use the track facilities will be forced to train on Mansfield’s roads in the dark as the nights draw in.

New runners coach Maddie Collinge said the trustees had offered to swap Thursday’s session for a Wednesday or Friday instead but this was just not practical.

Said Maddie: “Friday night is not good because people often race at the weekends and Wednesday is a rest day after the Tuesday session. Thursday has always been the best option - that is when we have always trained for the last 25 years.

“Hundreds of families are affected by this decision.”

Mansfield Harriers has up to 400 members, of which 30 per cent are juniors aged 9-18. The loss of the Berry Hill facilities means athletes such as shot putters, long jumpers or javelin throwers will have nowhere to train on a Thursday.

The slot has now been taken over by youth football club the Woodhouse Colts, forcing the Harriers to meet in the park’s busy car park rather than at its clubhouse.

A Colts spokesman said the club had used the park on Thursday but was now making other arrangements.

Ray Jackson-Smith, secretary to the park’s board of trustees, said he was able to get more money offering the facilities per night to others and the Harriers owed the trustees money. Mayor Tony Egginton said it made sense to keep Berry Hill an athletics venue. He added: “I will endeavour to meet with the trustees. It seems this saga has been going on and on.”

News

Local

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

ONLINE POLL: New row between Berry Hill Park and Harriers AC

Top stories

News

Local