THE cost of long-awaited improvements at Frodsham Town Bowling Green have been reduced after players were invited to use toilets at the next-door fire station.
Bowling club members and visitors to the green behind the Red Lion Pub in High Street currently have to pop into the pub to spend a penny, and providing new toilets has been top of the list of town council plans to revamp the site.
But, following an offer to allow bowlers access to toilet facilities at Frodsham Fire Station, councillors agreed to rethink original plans.
Now funding earmarked for the project – which also includes a new pavilion and landscaping – has been cut from £17,000 to £10,000 in the town council’s 2012-13 budget.
Mayor Andrew Dawson told the council’s budget meeting the improvement project was likely to cost ‘a lot less’.
“The fire station is a community resource and the deputy chief fire officer has agreed in principle that bowlers can use the fire station toilets, for an annual payment of £500 by the town council,” said Cllr Dawson, who suggested the council could check out facilities by holding its March meeting at the fire station.
In 1997 the council stepped in to save the popular bowling green, buying the site on behalf of the community for £50,000 after former pub owners threatened to demolish it for proposed new housing.
