LAWN bowlers fear their village sport will be ditched after the council raised fees by more than 1,000 per cent.
Lower Kingswood Bowls Club has been meeting at the village recreation ground off Buckland Road for 40 years, but Reigate and Banstead Borough Council has slapped them with a new annual management fee of £12,000 from next month.
The 40-year-old club, which currently has 22 members who play between May and September, currently pays about £1,000 per year to the authority, a rental fee that would still apply on top of the new charge.
The council argues the club should pay for the maintenance of the green, or look after it themselves. But members say the authority is being inflexible and forcing them to close.
Member Mavis Card, 72, said: "This is the only sport the village has got. I know we are only a small club but we are like family. It is an exorbitant price for what they do."
The club says a greenkeeper spends less than a day per week at the site in the summer.
Club member John Barlow, 63, said: "Clearly there is a lot of support locally that the club should remain and we have been trying to raise money. We have got some, but it still leaves us very short.
"What gets people is the fact it is a huge amount to pay. And if we did go, what will happen to the green? No-one else will use it, it will just get overgrown. It will become a wasteland, generating no income at all.
"I understand where the council is coming from but you have got to weigh up the cost to taxpayers with the benefit to the community."
Two years ago, football teams including the local Mogador Rangers, were driven off the recreation ground when the council agreed the Netherne Falcons, now renamed the Kingswood Falcons, could have exclusive use of the pitches in a deal which saved an undisclosed sum of cash.
Now, the bowls team say they are being priced out too.
Trevor Card, 75, said: "They have taken away everything here – the tennis courts, the cricket, the football, things that are very important to a village. I feel disgusted about it."
