Sea Scouts have nowehere else to go

We appreciate the sympathy the Friends of St Nicholas Park to our predicament, but unfortunately their comments fail to offer any solutions to our problem.

Our current HQ building is nearly 50 years old, at the end of its life and wholly inadequate by today’s standards. Unless we do something in the next few years, there is a real risk that we will be without a meeting place and the future of our 200 strong group will be in jeopardy. Furthermore, we will remain unable to help a high proportion of the 175 young people on our waiting list find a place in Scouting.

We do not wish to mislead the public into how this proposal has developed, but we need to make it clear that the Sea Scouts have never been given a map of Warwick and a free choice on where a new building could be positioned.

During 2007/8; the public and interested parties were consulted on various proposals for the improvement of St Nicholas Park as part of a National Lottery funding application. Proposals included the enhancement of the eastern end of the park which saw the removal of our current premises.

Warwick District Council conducted their own independent feasibility study on where to relocate the Group’s HQ, which finalised on the option adjacent to the Myton Road houses. We were subsequently given landlords consent to apply for Planning Permission, but only for that site. The documents which record this are widely available on the internet.

Rebuilding on our current site in the park was never presented as an option. We have nowhere else to go.

If the Friends of St Nicholas Park do not feel they have been adequately consulted, then this is an old argumentwhich I am sure they expressed to our former MP, James Plaskitt when they met with him and local residents at the proposed site on April 25 2009.

Neil Pitchford, Group Scout Leader, 2nd Warwick Sea Scouts (Royal Navy Recognised Unit No. 14), Warwick.