AS you reported on the front page of last week's Malvern Gazette, I was, as the relevant portfolio holder, present at the meeting with Newtown Sports Juniors Football Club where the club was informed of the difficulties that resulted in us withdrawing our offer of a long- term lease on the Sling Lane site.

For the record, we did indeed offer to enable the club to find somewhere more suitable and we are totally committed to this. However, we also offered it exclusive use of the extra slots we now have on The Chase school all-weather facility for training purposes and the use of the one pitch on Sling Lane on a match-to-match basis in order to help overcome short-term capacity problems.

Community health and well-being are one of our key priorities and I would contend that we have done everything possible to help them out.

We now come to the implication made by Richard Davies (Your Letters, April 22) and others that the reason for withdrawing our offer of a lease was dictated by political considerations in the run-up to the General Election, in which Tom Wells is a candidate. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we took the action we did in order to preserve the best interests of Newtown Sports Juniors Football Club.

If we were as an administration to be totally cynical and self-serving we could have kept this proposed decision under wraps until the executive committee meeting in May, well after polling day.

Newtown Sports, believing that all was well, may well have vacated its Lower Howsell Road site and been left effectively homeless.

To conclude, you were absolutely correct in saying in your editorial that both ourselves and Newtown Sports failed to adequately explain to the residents what was actually planned and we will learn from this. However, the way we have conducted recent events is both honest, transparent and does not in any way smack of political expediency.

Clive Smith, Greenfields Road, Malvern Link.