MULTI-million pound plans to build a sports complex on the outskirts of York could be ditched - leaving hundreds of sportsmen and women without anywhere to exercise.

City Of York Council looks set to throw out plans submitted by the Civil Service Sports Club to build a £7 million sports complex at Clifton Moor. The state-of-the-art club would replace the former club site at Boroughbridge Road, which was closed last April for financial reasons.

The club teamed up with Malton-based Harrison Developments for the ambitious project, to be built on land behind the Ikon and Diva nightclub.

Planning officials in York look likely to recommend that the proposals are refused for a number of reasons, chiefly that the site lies within the green belt.

While preserving the green belt is an important consideration, especially in an expanding, crowded city such as York, it is hard to see much value in the low-grade agricultural land in question.

For green belt, it is not exactly very green. Surely this scrub land just inside the ring road would be put to much better use as a modern sports facility, rather than remaining as open, but unproductive, space.

The backers of the proposed club spent two years looking for a suitable alternative site to Boroughbridge Road, and felt they had found the right one. Facilities at the 11-acre complex would include 12 all-weather five-a-side football pitches and two full-size football pitches, a swimming pool and gymnasium, four tennis courts and squash courts and a cricket square.

We are all being told to exercise more, so it seems strange that the planning authorities should be considering the rejection of such a green and health-promoting scheme.

Updated: 10:22 Thursday, October 16, 2003