Opponents of a plan to build a community centre on a town's playing field have not given up the fight, even though a planning application is expected to be submitted imminently.

The Friends of the Memorial Playing Field have launched an online petition urging Tunbridge Wells Borough Council to lobby Paddock Wood Town Council to reconsider its plans.

The town council owns the Memorial Playing Field, off Maidstone Road, after acquiring it from Brenchley Parish Council in 1957.

As early as 1977, the field was suggested as a possible site for a new community centre for the town.

In 2009, the town council whittled an initial short-list of 10 sites down to just three - the Memorial Field, St Andrew's Field and land at Green Lane.

In 2018, it settled on the Memorial Playing Field, and it was around this time that opposition to the scheme began to emerge, with Wendy Morris from Chaffinch Way founding The Friends of the Memorial Playing Field and hosting its first petition against the plans, which attracted 878 signatures, although the town council said only 594 were Paddock Wood residents.

Since then, the Friends have won a moral victory after forcing a Parish Poll on the issue in January 2019, which showed a majority against building the centre on the playing field - the vote was 409 against to 357 for.

The town council chose to ignore the vote and press ahead anyway.

It has since commissioned and approved a design from Baxall Construction and instructed the company to submit a planning application to Tunbridge Wells council.

The design includes a hall to hold 300 people, but which can be sub-divided into three smaller halls. There is also a meeting room, kitchen and cafe area. The building will include a self-contained two-class pre-school catering for 40 children.

But the scheme will mean the loss of some of the playing field and the re-location of the existing tennis courts.

The estimated cost is between £3m and £3.2m.

The council has three allocations of Section 106 money in the pipeline from the developers currently building at Church Farm, Mascalls Court Farm and Mascalls Farm in the town, which total £1,009,584.

In addition it is planning to take out a Public Works Loan of up to £1.9m. The loan will be repayable over a 50-year period. It has also allocated a total of £250,000 from its parish precept over the past six years towards the project, but has already spent £244,081 on public consultations, surveys, design costs and the like to get this far.

Jeremy Thompson is the current chairman of the Friends of the Memorial Playing Field.

He accused the town council of being "blinkered" in its approach.

He said: "We are not opposed to the construction of a community centre, but not where its will cause the loss of valued green space."

He suggested the centre would be better placed as an add-on to the existing Putlands Sports Centre in the town.

Mr Thompson said that with the imminent construction of thousands more homes in and around Paddock Wood, the importance of preserving its few green spaces was becoming ever more apparent.

The council has said that the new centre must now be built at the Memorial Field, because the Section 106 payments from two of the three developers were specifically tied to that location.

But Mr Thompson said it would be no difficulty to get a deed of variation to the agreements to put the money towards a centre somewhere else.

Asked if the council abandoned its plans now, whether it wouldn't be a waste of the £244,000 already spent, Mr Thompson said it may be possible to use the same design on another site.

He also said that the council had failed to take into account the changing circumstances brought on by Covid.

He said: "Every authority is being forced to cut back.

"The council believes a pre-school will be the anchor tenant for the new centre, but I have seen no evidence to suggest there is a demand for it.

"With the new housing, Paddock Wood will get a new primary school, which will have a pre-school facility of its own."

He pointed out that St Andrew's Church opposite the site had three good halls for community use and both the existing primary school and Mascalls Academy also let out their facilities. He said: "The new community centre is going to be another competitor in a shrinking market.

"With the current state we are in - Tunbridge Wells council for example having to hand out £670,000 to keep its own three leisure centres afloat - to proceed is financial suicide."

He said: "The pandemic means the rulebook will have to be re-written."

Mr Thompson is the former manager of the town's Midland Bank and has lived in Paddock Wood since 1988.

He said: "The town council needs to halt its plans and look again at Putlands instead."

Cllr Meryl Flashman is the chairman of Paddock Wood Town Council. She said: "Paddock Wood is desperately in need of this facility.

"We've been looking to build a community centre for many years. One of the key restrictions was that it had to be on land owned by the council, otherwise it would have been too expensive."

She said: "We did lots of research to come up with an appropriate plan.

"We did consider Putlands, but that was looking at building on the field there, not adding on to the leisure centre, which we don't have control over - it is on a long lease to the borough council that we can't break.

"The new centre will take up only 11% of the Memorial Playing Field.

"I'm delighted that we are finally getting to the stage where we can move forward with this plan."

The town council believes that if planning permission is granted, construction could start as early as June this year, with completion by February 2022.

Residents can sign the Friends of the Memorial Playing Field petition here.

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