A SPORTS association has failed to agree a new lease to run the newly-named Hazlemere Memorial Hall, a council has announced.

Hazlemere Parish Council chairman Cllr Brian Mapletoft said Hazlemere Sports Association had ‘conceded the issue’ and its lease will now end on November 30. 

He called it a ‘commercial decision taken in the wider interest of Hazlemere’.

The long-running row centres on HSA’s £1 peppercorn lease, which HPC says has expired and wants it replaced with a £40,500 a year commercial rate that HSA opposed and claimed it could not afford.

HSA member Alan Cecil believes many sports clubs that currently use the facilities may look elsewhere if the council imposes higher rates.

He said: “It is shoddy. The council made a decision behind closed doors and it was forced through because they want a commercial rate. People are up in arms about it.

“HSA could manage with limited use of the facilities but my feeling is the tennis club could go elsewhere, football teams could use other facilities and go to a pub after games, so the pavilion could die a death.

“You start upping the rates and it will put people off and all of a sudden it becomes a white elephant for the council.”

HPC has decided to rename the complex off Amersham Road, which was dedicated to the memory of Ken Williams when it was opened in 2011.

Yet it still carries the Ken Williams Memorial Pavilion name on its website, which states the ex-councillor “dedicated a lot of his life to the improvements of Hazlemere.” Mr Cecil said it was “disrespectful”.

Cllr Mapletoft said the saga over the control of the facility was ‘simply a commercial decision taken in the wider interest of Hazlemere’.

He added: “HSA has taken the council for granted for too long and so the council has gone through the legal process – we didn’t even have keys to the building we owned, which cannot be correct.

“They have also never published their accounts for the public to examine, so I challenge HSA to publish their full accounts so the public can see how much money they have made from the memorial hall.”

Cllr Mapletoft said the council elected to rename the building as the memorial pavilion had been used by association a ‘symbol’.

He added: “They regarded it as a name they could use to say they were doing it for the good of the community but that’s not the case.”

The council served HSA a Section 25 notice to vacate the centre by May to ‘force the group to the negotiation table’ before the group secured a four month extension which ended on August 30.

But HPC announced on September 3 that, as a new lease had not been agreed, HSA had ‘conceded’ and needed to vacate the building by November 30.