SLOUGH Borough Council has apologised for its failure to make pitches at Harvey Park ready for the new football season.

The East Berkshire Football League got under way on Saturday with clubs left angry at the state of the facilities at Harvey Park in Tamar Way.

Langley Galaxy tweeted: "Over £1,000 for a pitch and all we get is painted goals. No grass cut and no access to changing rooms. Laughing stock."

Mike Holdsworth is a referee in the league and tweeted: "No car park, changing room and toilet and the longest grass in 16 years. Nearly called the other Harvey Park game off."

The council has apologised and explained that the process will become more efficient in the future.

A spokesperson for the council told the Observer: "The request to use Harvey Park came in quite late on Friday but it's our fault. We took on the booking but only some of the pre-season work had been done.

"The team were expecting the football season to start this weekend so had planned for works to be done this week. To be honest, they were lucky to have the goals up and pitch markings because the park was not ready.

"We can only apologise for this and all the work will be sorted for this weekend."

They added: "At the moment we have a team that take bookings and another to get the pitches ready, so we know how to complicate things ourselves.

"We should be able to sort this more efficiently once it all comes under one team who have the responsibility to take the bookings and get the parks ready.

"It will be under one cleaning contract later on this year and should be a more straightforward process in the future."

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