You cannot put a price on health. It seems you have, £170k & rising”: football league hits out at 55% price hike.

In another blow to Labour this week the Council has finally spoken out on its 55% hike in the cost of a game of football.  But the East Berkshire Football League has criticised the Council for “putting a price on health”.

Colnbrook Views revealed the news in February that small print in the Council’s budget for 2015/16 would see the charge for the hire of a football pitch in Slough increased by 55% while cricket would be increased by 112%.

The new prices took effect from April 1.

But pressure from the Slough Observer appears to have forced Council into a belated statement on the issue.  Normally big on sport, the Observer finally picked up on the story after the East Berkshire Football League hit out at the Council for ignoring its complaints at the price hike,tweeting:

After four weeks of questions and complaints, Slough Borough Council tweeted back on Wednesday “140 characters doesn’t make for nuanced debate” and finally issued a statementregarding the rise in fees on its website.

The Statement read:

Each year, we spend more than £200,000 on the upkeep of the football pitches and associated facilities (for example changing rooms, goalposts, nets, opening and closing gates) in the borough. Last year, fees from football clubs using the pitches amounted to £30,000. This meant the council was subsidising the clubs around £170,000 a year.

Unfortunately, as many people are aware, we have suffered major cuts to our grants from central government which meant that, for this year, we needed to make £14.5 million of savings. This massive cut, which came on top of three previous years of cuts, means we can no longer subsidise football to the levels we have in the past and we had to raise pitch fees.

To ensure it was done fairly, we compared the prices of 12 neighbouring authorities and chose a new price which was average amongst them for both adult and child rates. The same was done for the fees for cricket pitches.
We understand the rise may be upsetting for local football clubs, however at a time when money to provide services is so short, it is not fair on local taxpayers to subsidise one or two sports over all other park-based activities to such a degree.

We have great plans for parks and park-based activities and organised sport continues to be a part of that.

Slough Council has humoured a lengthy debate on the topic on Twitter, reinforcing the statement.  But the League retorted back, tweeting:

You cannot put a price on health. It seems you have, £170k & rising.

SBC’s Twitter spokesperson also denied the Council is selling football pitches, and insisted it is only bringing prices into line with other local authorities.

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