Petworth Park sports ground lease nears agreement

Town councillors stepped in to take over the National Trust (NT) lease from the Joint Sports Association (JSA) after the JSA’s talks with the National Trust to renew it, faltered.

At a full meeting of Petworth Town Council last night (Wednesday, April 19) chairman Chris Kemp told fellow councillors they should see the draft lease in the next week which would contain the amendments they had called for.

He told town councillors: “The important piece of the jigsaw is that the NT has agreed that as soon as this (five year) lease is in place, we can immediately start negotiating for a 25 year lease which will take us about 12 more months to tick all the boxes.

“The new lease will immediately supersede the five year and the NT is not going to make us wait for the longer lease.”

Once the longer lease is in place it will mean the town council can look for grant funding for facilities on the Petworth Park sports ground.

A task and finish group is being convened to set up a management group which will run the sports ground in the future.

It will consists of members of the JSA, the new cricket club and the town council.

The town council wants to hear from anyone who would like to bring their sport to the grounds.

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on.

1) Make our website your homepage at www.midhurstandpetworth.co.uk/

2) Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/MidhurstandPetworthObserver

3) Follow us on Twitter @mid_pet_obs

4) Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends - so they don’t miss out!

The Midhurst and Petworth Observer - always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.