NEWTOWN Sports Juniors Football Club could still be offered a lease on playing fields off Spring Lane.

Last week 150 residents living around Sling Lane were informed in a letter from Malvern Hills District Council leader Tom Wells, which was headed 'listening to local people', that the offer of a lease to the club was to be withdrawn.

But this week, Lee Robson, the council's head of economic and community development, confirmed a decision will have to be made by the executive committee.

He said it was too late to put the question to the committee's meeting next Tuesday, April 26.

Instead, it will have to be held over for the meeting after that, on May 24.

If the executive committee confirms the decision, it will be reversing its own decision, taken in July last year, to allow Newtown Sports to lease and maintain football pitches off Sling Lane for 25 years.

Coun Wells agreed the decision would have to be made by the executive committee.

"The leader of the council does not make unilateral decisions like that," he told the Gazette.

But in his letter to Sling Lane residents Coun Wells had written: "I have, therefore, today met with senior representatives of Newtown Sports Club and conveyed the news that the council will not be offering a lease arrangement to the club."

Simon Elmes, the club's FA co-ordinator, who was at that meeting with Coun Wells and Coun Clive Smith on Tuesday, April 12, said: "As far as we were concerned, what we were told was we would not be offered the lease."

This week Coun Wells said: "The purpose of the meeting with Newtown Sports was to acquaint them with the mountain of objections we received and tell them that in the light of that, it's going to be difficult for us to offer them the lease.

"Although a formal decision has yet to be made, that needed to be explained."