REPRESENTATIVES of Okehampton Rugby Club and West Devon Borough Council are working hard to secure a permanent training facility for youngsters as the search for a new training pitch goes on.

The club has around 250 youngsters who play and train each week. The youth teams trained on land in Brightley for three years, but the borough council ordered the club to stop using the site back in November. The decision placed the teams with no permanent site on which to train, leaving their future in doubt.

Since then they have done most of their training on the all-weather pitches at Okehampton College. The youth players have also trained at the Manor House Hotel in the sports hall.

In the initial planning application, the club applied for retrospective permission for a hardstanding parking area, to change the use of land to a rugby training ground, erection of a changing room building and use of portable floodlights.

The club intended to continue to use the site at Brightley as a temporary training ground while continuing to search for a permanent one.

It was turned down for disrupting the character of the quiet and undeveloped rural location, and the effects training and floodlights have upon the ecology and protected species, particularly bats.

Since then the council and club have been in regular contact, looking at ways to provide an appropriate training site.

Cllr James McInnes, Leader of West Devon Borough Council, said: 'We are in regular contact with Okehampton Rugby Club to work towards a suitable solution for the community.

'Last month, myself and council officers from various departments met with rugby club representatives regarding a short term solution to their need for training facilities.

'Our planners are also working with the club to ensure the borough council understands their long term needs as part of the master planning process for Okehampton's future development.'

The club is revising its planning application at Brightley, and will submit it to the borough council in the near future.

John Shields, the chairman of the club's pitches sub-committee, said: 'We are now using a planning consultant to discuss with West Devon the issues that affected the first planning proposal. The first time round, we had no discussion really with the council over the plans.

'If we as a club had discussed things with councillors first time around, we probably could have sorted the problem much quicker. We are hoping that we can achieve that now.'

He said the all-weather pitches in Okehampton were fine for running around on, and keeping fit, but were not designed for contact sports.

'On the all-weather pitches, we cannot practice scrums, tackling, or large parts of the game. What we ideally need is a grass pitch with floodlights. Our other pitches already take a lot of strain from other training, so we can't use those.

'The club itself though is doing really well. We have had several of our lads play for Devon, and the under 16s and the Colts are doing better than ever.

'Despite the training problems, things with the club are going very well indeed.'

For more information on the club, visit sites.google.com/site/okerugbycom