PLANS for a £29,000 state-of-the-art skate bowl on West Liss Recreation Ground hit another hurdle this week when the Open Spaces Society issued a legal challenge. The proposals from Liss Parish Council have been dogged by criticism for several years. The latest plan for a concrete bowl, announced earlier this summer, received a knock when West Liss villagers began a campaign to stop the park and drew up a petition. Now the Open Spaces Society, a national organisation based in Henley, has written to parish councillors questioning whether the skate bowl would be a legal development on the recreation ground, which is a registered village green. Kate Ashbrook, the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, told Liss parish councillors in a letter recently: "The society objects most strongly to the plans for a skate bowl on the village green." She said the society believed the development would "suburbanise the green and be a blot on the landscape". Mrs Ashbrook told The Herald: "The only developments allowed on village greens are in relation to use for lawful sports and pastimes under section 12 of the Inclosure Act of l857, section 29, and the Greens Act of l876." She added: "For instance, if the green was used for cricket and someone wanted to build a cricket pavilion, that would be lawful, but the skate bowl would be a horrible suburban thing stuck on the village green. "It would not be in relation to skating taking part on the whole of the green." "We do not think it holds water," Roger Mullenger told fellow Liss parish councillors on Monday night, "but we must take it seriously." He said the council was planning a public meeting as part of its public consultation process and would make a final decision on whether to go ahead with the plans after that. He hoped the meeting would take place in the next two months, but the challenge from the Open Spaces Society would have to be answered first. The council is currently seeking legal advice on whether its plans for the recreation ground are, in fact, legal. He told the meeting that a special working party had met in the summer to draft a response to all those villagers who had written in with their comments or objections. This letter had been approved by councillors and had since now been distributed to all concerned, including homes around the West Liss Recreation Ground . Mr Mullenger confirmed that an independent chairman would be brought in from outside the village to chair the public meeting later this year. And he told members of the public that the parish council was to fund transport to take villagers to Bournemouth to view similar skate-park facilities to those proposed in Liss. Several young skate-park enthusiasts attended the meeting and urged councillors to act quickly to provide the facilities. "The sooner it happens, the better," one teenager told councillors, "because we have been told by the police that if we skate outside Tesco, we have to pay £8 fines on the spot." He said youngsters had been told they were not even allowed to sit outside Tesco in the village centre. Other young skateboarders asked if there were ways they could help raise funds for the project or help with the work. One villager, Andrew Gibson, said he believed the project was a fait accompli and wanted assurances that he would not have to pay for it from his community tax bill. He was told that much of the money would come from developers' contributions, while parish councillors were confident they would also receive grant funding from East Hampshire District Council and grant-giving organisations.
