Viewpoint: Impact of Braywick decision on women and girls' football

Email Viewpoint letters tojamesp@baylismedia.co.ukor write to Viewpoint, Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1HX.

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Lasting negative impact on women’s football

进一步RBW的令人失望的转变M regarding Maidenhead United’s move to Braywick, I remain flabbergasted by the lack of consideration by the new council administration of the potential benefits of the club’s proposed new Braywick Park Community Stadium.

As a trustee of the Maidenhead United FC Community Trust, I am proud to be the champion of women’s and girls’ football within the club.

At a time when the popularity and growth of women’s football is at an all-time high, driven by the success of the Lionesses, our council has naively made a decision which will have a profound and long-term negative impact for women’s and girls’ football and sport in Maidenhead.

The development of women’s and girls’ football is a key priority for Maidenhead United and represented a big part of the future plans for the new stadium which would have supported the growth of the female side of the game in Maidenhead from U7s through to the women’s first team.

The availability of training facilities and Astroturf space is limited in Maidenhead, to the extent that our women’s first team have for over a year been travelling to Reading to access training facilities, which they will have to do again for the coming season.

We have also now reached that point where we will be unable to significantly grow our junior girls provision because there are simply no Astroturfs available to use within the town.

While you might assume that the playing fields at Braywick Park are available to help meet this need, sadly this is not the case.

One of our female managers recently decided to run a training session for one of our junior girls team on the grass at Braywick Park at a time when the park was completely empty.

However, shortly after starting the session they were told by a representative of the rugby club that they ‘couldn’t train on the grass because the site was rented by the rugby club from the council’.

Despite challenging this request because there was no one else using the park and they were only going to be there for hour, they were told that they had to move on.

As far as I’m aware the playing fields at Braywick Park are for public use, so why shouldn’t nine girls train there for an hour?

It seems to me that Maidenhead Utd’s proposals for Braywick are the most practical solution to helping meet the town needs for additional community sports facilities.

The proposals included two new Astroturfs at the only location in Maidenhead specifically allocated for indoor and outdoor sport. The proposals addressed wider community sport needs incorporating much needed new athletics facilities to the town, new futsal facilities and Astroturfs suitable for football and junior rugby.

Given the Braywick Park pitches are clearly not available for all to use currently, this still seems like a sensible idea to me!

Furthermore, the proposals would enable the club to establish Braywick as a hub for women’s and girl’s football and sport, by providing the essential additional facilities required to support growth in female participation in sport.

An opportunity which has now been taken away without any apparent consideration by the council.

TANYA DAVIS-HUSSAIN

Head of women’s football, treasurer; Maidenhead United Juniors, academy and women’s teams. Maidenhead United Community Trust trustee

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Disappointed by front page story on homes

Last week’s front page stating, ‘major concerns’ over the masterplan for 200 homes in Cookham, through lack of journalistic rigour, depth, and balance, missed the real story and jeopardises your strapline of ‘trusted independent journalism’.

You quote former Councillor Clark as some form of saviour and village spokesman. Read Viewpoint from April 6.

Angela Smith and I reported from the masterplan adoption meeting, being the only two residents to attend on that rainy night in Windsor.

Clark, attempting to find favour in Cookham, and Johnson played out the last gasps of spin to save their autocracy, which was overthrown just six weeks later.

Clark never said a single word in the stakeholder reviews and not only avoided but undermined detailed traffic analysis that was presented during inspector hearings. Where is he now supporting the village initiatives to stop this development?

Where are the quotes from Cookham Parish Council and Cookham Society, both against this development, or indeed current ward councillors?

You failed to report, as publicly claimed at the adoption meeting, that the masterplan broke the Newbury rules not being ‘fair and reasonable’.

Not a single comment was made to that claim by the cabinet.

It’s available on YouTube (March 31) along with the lead for planning’s comments that Cookham doesn’t need more doctors and dentists as it is oversupplied.

Moreover, I have had no response to my request to overturn the adoption due to rule breach from RBWM, before or since the change of administration.

Why, might you ask?

Rigour would have shown that the response to a Freedom of Information request to RBWM asking for the required agreed specification of the requirements of the masterplan, was that there was no specification.

In other words, it had no transparent aim, but is a ‘material consideration’ in planning. You could have learned that Bellway via its PR agency refused to provide their traffic model saying it was ‘in draft’, yet, now published, refers to directly relevant potential strategic highway changes that happened over six months ago.

Was this to avoid the exposure of gridlock?

Perhaps you might have asked the landowners why they want to leave a legacy of traffic gridlock, services overburdened, and homes not required (as stated in the 2018 Objectively Assessed Need)?

Indeed, why was such land included in the Local Plan?

To the people of Cookham I suggest that if you don’t want gridlock, distortions in the housing market, 16 per cent growth in Cookham Rise and need a doctor’s appointment, then you now need to review the applications and comment to planning, or forever hold your peace.

Spencer’s Farm, a Local Plan application for 330 homes, was refused and so can this one.

To The Advertiser, what we have seen here is ‘an abuse of power’, report it.

Our MP will likely approve, it’s the title of her new book.

PAUL STRZELECKI

Berries Road

Cookham

Editor’s note:Matters of significant public concern, such as this planning application, can never be covered in one story.

It has always been our intention to speak to Cookham stakeholders about the plans, as evidenced in the report on p5.

上周的头版故事旨在outline the substance of the planning application, so readers can get a better understanding of what exactly is being proposed.

The report only briefly referred back to the cabinet meeting simply because we have already covered it in more detail in a report in April (indeed, the correspondent’s concerns that the masterplan was ‘unfair and unreasonable’ were quoted in that article).

Print space and reporter resources are finite.

We aim to tell stories from multiple perspectives, but these are often spread out over multiple articles.

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Make public spaces more friendly to girls

Maidenhead has many parks and outdoor spaces that can be transformed into places where girls can feel safe and enjoy spending time outdoors.

There is a worldwide organisation, Make Space for Girls, that have an example of how a park can be made better for girls.

Einsidler Park in Vienna has wider paths, better lighting, group seating areas, smaller games spaces, good toilets and girl-friendly play equipment such as swings and climbing equipment.

Improving the lighting, having wide entrances to play areas and seating arranged in groups would transform spaces such as Kidwells Park.

Our RBWM councillors, specifically the lead councillor for parks and recreation, should ask for the views of local girls about what they would like to see provided to make our local parks more attractive to them.

Developers should be required to create spaces that are girl-friendly.

Let’s make Maidenhead a town that leads the way in making girls feel welcome in our public spaces.

RONA NOBLE

Women’s Officer

Maidenhead Labour Party

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Friendly ladies’ choir seeks new members

Most local clubs and activities will be preparing themselves for the start of the autumn season having enjoyed a long summer break.

Not so the Tuesday Singers, who have only taken two weeks off! Unusually they rehearse for 48 weeks in the year and meet in the mornings.

The singers are retired and so will take their own holidays as and when during the year (need to work hard to catch up with what they miss!).

Unfortunately, gentlemen, this is a ladies’ choir.

Luckily there is so much singing in Maidenhead that you will find somewhere to enjoy music, although possibly not in the morning.

Rehearsals start promptly at 10am on Tuesdays as James Church walks through the door.

He conducts and accompanies us.

The rehearsal ends at 11.45am, when we adjourn to the cafe area of the church to enjoy coffee and chat.

There is a small car park at St Marks Crescent Methodist Church, Allenby Road, Maidenhead,SL6 5BH and plenty of room by the local shops and in the roads.

There is also a bus stop in Farm Road for those who don't drive and are not close enough to walk.

Our members come from High Wycombe and Slough as well as Maidenhead.

The music is mainly in two or three-part harmony and includes works from thirties musicals through Sinatra up to the Beatles and Abba but also spirituals and gospel and the occasional classic.

James chooses a wide selection of styles to make an interesting and entertaining programme for the local clubs that we are invited to entertain.

If you enjoy singing, even if out of practice, come to a rehearsal to hear and meet with the members. We are building up our numbers since lockdown but would be happier with a better balance in parts.

The alto line has gained most new people so we would love to gain more sopranos, both tops and seconds.

More information is available from Judithinman@btinternet.com or by phone 01494 443464. Also via the Maidenhead Arts Council website.

JUDITH INMAN

Tuesday Singers

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Time to end reckless separatist shenanigans

Ignoring the niggling semantics of what constitutes an official (surely an MP or Prime Minister is an elected official) it is clear that there is more than a grain of truth in DR Cooper’s latest pronouncement on the everlasting Brexit debate (Viewpoint, August 25).

While David Cameron proved himself something of a witless chancer by holding the 2016 referendum in the first place, his rapid exit from frontline politics on June 24 was understandable, knowing as he did that nothing he could negotiate could match the advantages of being in the EU.

Theresa May tried to do her best by promoting the second best option (leaving the EU but remaining in the Customs Union and Single Market) but the hard line right wing Tories who seem to control this shambles of a political party scuppered any chance of that.

Of course, the Great Charlatan (such an apt description) gave us sound bites galore such as Get Brexit Done, but his main aim, like his gross distorted double, the other bloated bombastic bragger in the USA, is self aggrandisement, not proper government.

What should be becoming clearer is that when an official, representing a population of just under 68 million, is negotiating with officials representing a population of 448 million, all else being equal, the latter hold ALL the trump cards.

This is why the UK economy is in such a parlous state compared with the other countries of the EU.

但这种不计后果的缺点experiment in separatist shenanigans and the sooner the politicians begin to accept the will of the people, the sooner this ridiculous error can be rectified.

JAMES AIDAN

Sutton Road

Cookham