YOUR piece on last week's Lymm page, concerning the purchase of additional land for football pitches at Lymm High school, is likely to mislead your readers into thinking that the cost of the land and the school's ability to finance the project are similarly hyper-inflated.

The figure of £500,000 is a rough estimate of a larger scheme to be submitted as a bid for Sports Council Lottery funding, in which the land purchase represents a crucial but small proportion of the whole.

In collaboration with the Lymm High School Associates Football Club, currently itself without pitches in spite of its league status, and with Oughtrington Park Cricket Club, we intend to provide facilities for changing rooms, equipment storage, club and social activities, etc adjacent to the new land.

The costs of draining and creating top quality pitches, providing vehicle access and parking, connecting mains services, etc, will also be substantial.

In this day and age it is highly unusual for a school to be seeking to acquire playing fields. The reverse is commonly the case.

This project would in fact be of significantly greater benefit to the local community than to the school itself.

I am concerned that your readers may have gained a distorted view of our plans for what is, after all, public funding.

I should like them to be assured that Lymm High School is seeking to provide valuable amenities for the community while attempting to solve our own problem of having no pitches for our several hundred football players.

PETER BIRCHALL

Deputy Head

Lymm High School

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.