A COUNCIL chief was urged to ‘justify’ spending up an ‘eye watering’ £750,000 on plans to move Adams Park.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Steve Guy spoke after Wycombe District Council announced its total commitment was more than £500,000 previously announced.

He told leader Councillor Lesley Clarke: “As times are very tough financially for all of us, this seems to residents to be an eye watering amount of money.

“Could the leader please justify why so much money is needed at this stage and give us a breakdown of how it will be spent?”

Cllr Clarke said ‘people do want to see a community stadium’ and there ‘always were two budgets allocated for the scheme’.

These were up to £500,000 for a procedure needed to change the council’s planning rules – known as the core strategy – and up to £250,000 to study options.

Wycombe Sports Development Limited, which represents Wycombe Wanderers and London Wasps, will put in another £250,000.

Cllr Clarke said: “The project is very large scale, as you are well aware, and the evaluation consultation which is required to justify a core strategy is extensive.

“The costs incurred are not insubstantial.”

And she reprimanded Cllr Guy for saying the site will ‘possibly’ be at Wycombe Air Field.

She said: “There are several sites that are being looked at and Booker is one of them.”

And she said of Cllr Guy naming the site: “Please do not keep doing it.”

Cllr Guy said: “Over the last 15 months this council cut a number of community projects that are considered worthwhile because of the difficult financial times that we find ourselves in.”

He said he had been approached by residents who last year failed to get the council to back High Wycombe as a Fairtrade town (see link, bottom of story).

This was needed to give the town the status from the Fairtrade movement, which urges people to buy products which they say give third world producers a fair deal.

It would have cost £250 and Cllr Guy says the residents ‘want me to explain to them how it is we can find large sums of money when we can’t find small sums of money for worthwhile things’.

Yet Cllr Clarke said: “I don’t think Fairtrade supports the British farmers and I think we should out of courtesy support our farmers.

“There are a group of people who keep us fed and helping with Fairtrade was of no help to us.”

Click the links below for more on the stadium plan.