PENSIONERS battling to preserve their bowling green plan to hold a protest outside Preston Town Hall in a bid to protect their sports ground.

Members of the Smiths Recreation Bowls Team will grab the attention of councillors as they arrive for the next full council meeting on Thursday, July 15.

The protest is a last-ditch attempt to get help to keep vandals off their green, in Frenchwood.

For nearly six months they have been asking for a fence to be erected around their vandalised green.

Thugs have dug up the green, driven cars over it and set fire to the small clubhouse.

And bowlers say their patience has finally run out after the council's leisure services committee decided to defer the matter at a meeting earlier this month.

Several plans have been put forward in the past six months, including moving the bowlers to a new site and providing better facilities for local children, who have been accused of the vandal attacks.

But Coun Mick Moulding has stepped in on behalf of the bowling team, to help resolve the situation once and for all.

Coun Moulding said: "They have been pushed from pillar to post for the past six months and it is clearly very unfair.

"The leisure services department says it is not responsible for solving crime issues, but surely the bowlers deserve a chance to enjoy a past time which causes no harm to anyone.

"I have put forward an amendment to be read at the next full council meeting which says that the fence should be put up with the greatest of urgency."

A Preston Council spokesman said another report was being prepared for the leisure services committee in due course.

He added: "To put up a fence would cost in excess of £12,000."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.