RESIDENTS have been left angry after a popular BMX track in place for 30 years was demolished by the council.

St Michael’s Dirt BMX and mountain bike track situated in Coombes Wood at Smugglers Lane was closed by the Colehill Parish Council for a year before being demolished without warning, residents claim.

The track had been in place for 30 years, with the community building and maintaining the infrastructure for free.

The council says the track was closed in March 2020 when they became aware of a 'number of safety issues' at the site including several of the jumps being extended beyond the safe height limits agreed with the insurer, a number of large excavations dug without permission and drainage channels installed without permission.

Residents say they were working with the council to address these issues and were expecting to have an open meeting about the future of the site when they received a call to say it had been knocked down.

The council has now set up a meeting with residents to discuss the BMX track.

Olby Noscoe, a resident and BMX rider said: “The fact that the council has now arranged a meeting is too little too late as far as I’m concerned; the jumps are ploughed and that’s that. They don't realise how much work goes into building those jumps, they've been there for 30 years.

“It’s just heartbreaking really because we’ve spent our whole childhood digging these jumps and they’ve just taken that away from us.”

Fellow BMX rider Ollie Stewart said: “The main point was we just feel like they made their own decision in a way a council shouldn't, a meeting should be set up, issues discussed and decisions made but they just bypassed us and did what they wanted to do.”

In a statement on their website, Colehill Parish Council added: "In recent weeks we found that the closure signs had been removed, and a number of people were using the site again without permits, which would leave us uninsured in the event of an accident.

"We then found that many of the jumps were in a poor state of repair and starting to collapse. On closer inspection we found the jumps had been built with wooden logs inside which are now rotting and falling out, making most of the jumps now unsafe and unrepairable in their current form."