A PUBLIC school has started increasing prices at a council-a sports field after it took over the reigns.

Abingdon School took over the management of Abingdon's Tilsley Park, Abingdon for Vale of White Horse District Council on a 125-year lease in September.

It promised to invest in new pitches but has now started putting up the prices.

It put up the off-peak hire charge for five-a-side pitches by £4 to £32 an hour, and put up the on-peak charge by £1. It also put up a single session athletics track charge by 10p to £4.20.

Abingdon's Rush Common Primary School, Abingdon, at one point cancelled its annual sports day there because it said it was being charged when the hire used to be free. It has now said it will hold the sports day at Tilsley after all, but has declined to say whether it is paying for its use.

Other people also said they were affected by new charges.

Naomi Richardson, of Abingdon, said the hourly hire fee for her daughter’s weekly athletics class was increased.

She said: “Abingdon School took over and wanted to increase the hourly track hire from £40 to £65 and we couldn’t afford to do that because it was too expensive.“We have to pay for the coach as well so we ended up going to Iffley but we can’t use that any more because the track is no longer available in the mornings.

She said she was shocked to learn Abingdon School was planning to charge Rush Common School for use.

“A state school is having to pay a private school for a publicly-owned park. I don’t understand how the council can just do that.”

Abingdon Athletics Club uses the running track there three times a week for training and said it had not been hit with increased charges.

In a statement, Abingdon School said it had introduced “a few nominal price increases” which reflected improvements in the facilities, including hockey and five-a-side football pitches.

The Conservative-led Vale drew up the agreement with Abingdon School to save money because it said it was paying a contractor £250,000 a year to manage the site off Dunmore Road in north-west Abingdon.

In a statement the Vale said: “The lease for Tilsley Park allows Abingdon School to charge reasonable rates for community use of the facilities that take into account the cost, range and quality of facilities, along with the comparable prices charged by similar venues locally, where appropriate.

“We also encourage the use of concessionary pricing for lower income groups.”

It said the school must inform the council at least four months in advance of any changes to pricing for community use, and if dissatisfied the council can “raise significant concerns with the school and seek a resolution”.

Correction: The original published version of this story published yesterday was an out of date copy. Originally Rush Common School had not reached agreement to pay a fee to use Tilsley Park for its sports day, however prior to publication it decided to proceed with the event.

The updated story, as above, should have been published but was not due to a production error. We apologise to Rush Common Primary School for this error.