Lawrence Boxing Club in Lymington fears closure over lease deadlock with landlord New Forest District Council

A Lymington boxing club says it will have a fight on its hands to survive one more winter if it remains stuck in a deadlock with New Forest District Council over renewing its lease.

Lawrence Boxing Club in Marsh Lane has been unable to agree on terms for a new lease with the council since 2014.

Club chairman Alan Farrar says despite paying a peppercorn rent to the council since then, it needs a 25-year lease so it can apply for funding from bodies like Sport England and the National Lottery to make major repairs to the building.

Mr Farrar told the A&T: “We always had a 25-year lease in place, but that ran out in 2014.

“Back then, when NFDC offered us a new 25-year lease, it included a break clause that meant we could end up on 18 months’ notice to quit the building with no promise of new premises for us to move to.

“We’ve been in this building since the 1950s and we own it, so we won’t be moving out without another building to carry on in. A lease with that kind of break is not suitable for us in terms of securing funding to improve the building.

“When we went back to NFDC and told them that, they never bothered coming back about it again, so we just decided to carry on as we were.”

Mr Farrar added: “We were happy to pay a peppercorn rent because it made it easier to run the club.

“We’ve got our 100th anniversary coming up in 2028 and we want to make sure the club is secure going forward for the next 50 years at least, otherwise we will just fizzle out.

“You could accuse me of complacency, but without that peppercorn rent we wouldn’t have been able to get the club on a firm financial footing.

“We haven’t been idle while we’ve been paying that rent – we’ve put in new LED lighting and a new shower room among other improvements and we could not have done that without the low rent.

“But now that things like the roof need repairing it’s a different situation.”

He explained the building, which was completed in 1965, still has an asbestos roof and gas heaters.

He said: “It cost us £5,000 just to heat the club last year.

“If we have another winter like the one we’ve just had it will just be cheaper to just close the club. We need a new 25-year lease with no break clauses so we can get the funding we need to bring the building up to scratch.”

Supporting the club, former district councillor Jan Duke said: “Councils must wake up and understand the damage that is being done by the imposition of restrictive clauses.

“There is a significant difference between the requirement for a break clause in a lease when a third-party company takes over the running of a council facility and that of small independent clubs simply sitting on land owned by a council as is the case with the Lawrence Boxing Club.”

An NFDC spokesperson said: “The council has previously engaged with the boxing club to renew the expired lease but terms could not be agreed at that time.

“Since then the club has been permitted to continue with its occupation and use of the site at a modest annual rent. The council would welcome further discussions with the boxing club on the matter.”