Trowbridge Rugby Football Club and Trowbridge Wanderers Football Club will be granted some of the £288,000 of Section 106 funding available to improve their pitches and other facilities.
Both are likely to receive awards – whose value is yet unknown – from S106 Community Infrastructure Levy funds contributed by land developers for local community projects.
The move was announced on Tuesday, September 17 at Trowbridge Town Council’s full council meeting, alongside the £65,000 grant to enable Trowbridge Town FC to install new floodlights at its Woodmarsh Ground.
Andy Meaden, chair of Trowbridge Town FC, is celebrating after the club was granted £65,000 to install new floodlights at its Woodmarsh Ground. (Image: Trowbridge Town FC)
Trowbridge Town Council chief executive and town clerk Lance Allan told councillors: “This is a side agreement to the original agreement awarding the council the Section 106 funds for sports pitches which originally were intended to be spent on developing the Doric Park facility.
“As the council is no longer doing that there is £288,000 left and there is a three-page document for Wiltshire Council to agree that we can spend that money on other things.
“And those things will be for the improvement of existing sports pitches and facilities in and around the town including the Woodmarsh football ground.
“There’s £65,000 for the floodlights which they’ve already got planning permission for and some significant sums potentially for Trowbridge Town Football Club for drainage and improvements to the changing facilities.
“There is a sum allocated potentially for the improvement of the changing facilities at Lambrok and some money available for the rugby club to apply for floodlights, pitch two and other surface improvements to the area.
“In total that’s £288,000, as I said, the majority of that available to Trowbridge Town Football Club as they have progressed their developments further than the others as we speak.
“The money in the main has to be spent by September next year so there are discussions with the three clubs about the way in which we will achieve those expenditures within the next 12 months.”
The town council has been awaiting confirmation from Wiltshire Council of the opportunity to use the S106 funds already held by the town council for other sports projects and of any proposals that they may have for alternative locations for a 3G pitch.
Mr Allan said: “These discussions are progressing well and we anticipate confirming the allocations for local sports facilities as soon as a revised legal agreement between Wiltshire Council and the Town Council has been completed.”
The council voted in January to cancel plans for a 3G all-weather pitch at Doric Park after costs soared from £4.8 million to £6.6m, making it financially unviable.
The council is now looking at options for other suitable artificial turf sites and awaiting the outcome of a consultant’s review of the project.
But there are plans to deliver two new football pitches and a community building as part of Redrow Homes’ Elm Grove Farm development.
These will include changing facilities located adjacent to Elm Grove Recreation Ground and Drynham Road. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025/2026.
The huge Ashton Park development of around 2,500 new homes is also due to deliver a multi-pitch facility off the West Ashton Road.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025/26 with the pitches likely to be delivered towards the end of the first half of a 11- year programme.
Other developments could take place elsewhere using S106 funds from developers of new homes at Castle Mead, Green Lane, and Southwick.