AN offer to lease playing fields off Sling Lane, Malvern, to Newtown Sports Junior Football Club has been withdrawn by Malvern Hills District Council.

Chairman Martyn Twinberrow said the club was "disappointed".

It currently uses land off Lower Howsell Road but needs more room and had been negotiating with the council for several months in the hope of taking a long lease on the site.

But since the proposal was announced at the end of February, people living around the Sling Lane field have sent more than a hundred letters to the council, objecting to the impact of noise and vehicles and about how the site might be developed.

On Tuesday, MHDC leader Tom Wells told club representatives the council was withdrawing its offer.

He said: "The most over-riding concern is the conflict between designated public open space and its uses by a private football club."

The move represents a U-turn by the council, which in July last year agreed to lease the land to Newtown Sports at a peppercorn rent of £1 a year for at least 25 years.

At the time Coun Clive Smith described the decision as a "win-win situation". This week he said: "We'll be working closely with the club to find it somewhere more suitable."

Mr Twinberrow said: "The club wants to work with, not against, the community, but it is disappointed."

He said the club, which has about 290 playing members under 18, was a victim of its own success and was fast outgrowing its current facilities. It runs over a dozen teams, for boys and girls.

"It's a desperate shame the children of Malvern will not be able to enjoy the basic improvements, not fundamental changes, to the integrity of the area, on what are already playing fields."

He said the club would do the best it could, but it would have to put a limit on the number of youngsters it could take.

Coun Wells said people living around the Sling Lane fields should be involved in their future management and is looking at setting up a playing fields association.