“In the last 18 months, 52 houses have been given planning permission around the perimeter of the field. They are crowding in houses everywhere they can.”In Shropshire, campaigners are angry at plans by the West Midlands Regional Health Authority to build houses on land alongside the Royal Shrewsbury hospital which was once a sports field for hospital employees.The rush to sell off playing fields began with the Department of Education’s Circular 909 introduced in 1981. “If it is left to the local authorities, some of them would be more interested in the money.”Among the sites threatened by developers is the former sports field of the Foster’s Boys Grammar School in Sherbourne, Dorset. “The practice of selling off the playing fields has not just been promoted but actively encouraged by the previous government.” He said new legislation was needed to ensure sales could not go ahead without government approval. Nigel Hook, technical services director of the CCPR, said many primary school playing fields of less than one acre had been sold without notification and were not included in the figures “It’s a disgrace. The legislation encourages local authorities to sell off playing fields which could be used by young people. No wonder youth sports development is withering on the vine,” he said.The Labour peer Lord Dormand of Easington has been lobbying government ministers to do something to stop the sell-off.”It is absolutely scandalous,” he said.

A staggering 251 sites have been proposed for sale in the last eight months since a requirement to consult the Sports Council about prospective sales was introduced.David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education, and Chris Smith, Secretary of State for National Heritage, are preparing measures to reverse the trend “as a matter of urgency”.Restrictions will probably be introduced to make further sales of sports fields possible only when there is no local support for their retention. Ministers are urgently preparing measures to stop further sales of playing fields, as it emerged that more than 1,250 sites have been sold or offered to developers for housing and other building projects.
An unpublished report by the Central Council for Physical Recreation reveals the extent to which schools, local authorities, health trusts, railways and private companies have raised cash by selling off their sports grounds.The report reveals that in the last 12 years, 1,272 playing fields have been developed or face development. They are the lungs of the inner cities and the focal point of village life. But a report revealing the mass transformation of Britain’s playing fields into building sites and housing estates yesterday prompted warnings for the health of future generations. Mr Grobbelaar denies a separate charge of receiving pounds 2,000 connected to alleged match-fixing The case continues..

But if a conspiracy did exist, said Mr Calvert Smith, then “it does not matter whether the actual result of the match owed everything, little or nothing to the assistance of the corrupt player”.The pounds 40,000 paid to Mr Grobbelaar followed a match between Liverpool and Newcastle in November 1993 and the money was paid to him at an address used by Mr Fashanu.Mr Grobbelaar, Mr Fashanu and Mr Lim deny conspiring to give or receive money to fix matches Mr Fashanu, Mr Lim and Mr Segers deny a similar charge. Mr Calvert Smith said the intention was “that Grobbelaar would do what he could on the pitch to influence the results of games in order that the syndicate could more safely bet on their result”.While it was obvious that no one player could alone guarantee the result of a match, a goalkeeper was the single most important player for a syndicate to recruit, he said.The prosecution accepted that Mr Grobbelaar’s own andcompetitive instincts on the field may have frustrated the syndicate’s aims. Mr Lim, known as Richard, was the syndicate’s representative in London, and Mr Fashanu, former Wimbledon player and Gladiators presenter, was the “middleman” who later tried to take over direct dealing with the syndicate himself, he said.The conspiracy involved Mr Grobbelaar, now with Plymouth Argyle, receiving large sums of money for agreeing to influence matches in which he played for Liverpool, and later for Southampton. The prosecution would call the associate, Alphonsus Thuys, as a witness who would state that he “never paid Mr Segers a penny in cash”.The court also heard that Bruce Grobbelaar, the former Liverpool goalkeeper, received pounds 40,000 as “corrupt reward” for taking part in a conspiracy with Mr Fashanu to fix Premier League football matches.Mr Segers, Mr Grobbelaar and Mr Fashanu, together with Mr Lim, are being re-tried on corruption charges at Winchester Crown Court after a jury failed to reach a verdict in a seven-week hearing earlier this year.Outlining the case to the new jury, Mr Calvert Smith said the two goalkeepers had been recruited by a Far Eastern syndicate to influence the results of matches on which the syndicate was betting.

Hans Segers, the former Wimbledon goalkeeper, was involved in a conspiracy with fellow professional John Fashanu and Heng Suan Lim, a Malaysian businessman, and had received up to pounds 100,000, David Calvert Smith QC, for the prosecution, said.
The defendant had told a “pack of lies” to police that the money came from car crime when he was a young man in the Netherlands, and had told further lies at the first trial by claiming the cash came from his Dutch associate in a tie-manufacturing business. One of the defendants in the football match-fixing retrial twice told lies about a large amount of cash he received, the jury was told yesterday. On a subsequent visit to the Saudi capital Riyadh he met Said Ayas, an employee of the Prince.Continuing his evidence, Mr Aitken told the court that he was introduced to his wife, Lolicia, by Mr Ayas’s mother. And Mr Ayas and his sister later became godparents to Mr and Mrs Aitken’s two daughters.The case continues..

He was given five days to respond.Mr Aitken said that he eventually proposed that he appear on a live show where he could be interviewed to refute any allegations made against him after the documentary was screened. But this offer was rejected by Granada because it it did not conform to the the traditional format of the programme.Mr Aitken told the court that he had first met Prince Mohammed from the Saudi royal family during a business trip to Paris, and had kept in touch with him. Turning to the World in Action programme “Jonathan of Arabia”, broadcast in April 1995, Mr Aitken said: ” I think they had a preconceived and pre-planned hatchet job This was character assassination TV, not current affairs TV There was no attempt at balance or objectivity. It was ‘destroy Aitken’ time.”The former minister said he had received a letter from World in Action producer David Leigh saying the programme was preparing a “profile” of him and requesting an interview.