A YOUTH football club says it is being forced from its home of 20 years because of new parking charges introduced by Wrexham council.

Llay Utd, who have 120 players in training, use the country park for both games and training, but are now looking at alternative facilities in Wrexham and Flintshire, with final plans being put in place to allow this to happen from next week.

Dave Adams, Secretary of the club and a Llay Community Councillor, said the decision was made because some parents stated their children would not be re-signing with the club for the upcoming season due to them not being able to afford both the club fees and parking charges, while others said it was unfair that parking charges would apply to this club but not others in the area.

He said: "As a club we are very disappointed that any elected member would want to force a junior football club out of its home for the last 20 years or want to make a profit and raise revenue through children keeping healthy and playing sport with all the bad press surrounding childhood obesity."

Mr Adams said both the club and Llay Community Council were of the view that a mitigating factor in the proposal to introduce daily parking charge at Alyn Waters and two other country parks was that they would only apply during the hours of 9am-5pm.

He said: "We did plan to continue to use the football field at Alyn Waters for evening training, however when the parking charges have been introduced they seem to have gone against this proposal and introduced 24/7 parking charges."

Mr Adams said the potential amount of revenue generated in parking charges by the club's players for both training and matches if they remained could easily outstrip the annual income of the club itself, which is currently about £9k.

He added: "We already have children playing for us that struggle to pay their club fees and as a club we try everything we can to assist them."

Mr Adams also said the lack of suitable pitches in the Llay area has already had a negative impact, when the club had to decline an invitation to become involved with an FAW initiative of increasing girls football in North Wales, due to the uncertainty currently faced.

Cllr David A Bithell, lead member for environment and transport said: "Llay Utd trains at Alyn Waters on public open space - this is not a bookable football pitch where a fee is payable to Wrexham Council, so it is effectively free.

"We have introduced a car park charge in Alyn Waters, T? Mawr and Nant Mill at £1 all day, or users can purchase a season ticket for £50 per annum.

"Nobody likes to pay for car parking - however, this was part of the difficult decisions we made to protect front line services."