PARENTS in Cholsey have criticised their district council after pleas for a grant to help replace ageing play equipment were rejected.

Six mothers have been campaigning to get the Station Road Recreation Ground refurbished for two years.

They were pinning their hopes on South Oxfordshire District Council to fund the major share of the £130,000 project.

They said most of the 20-year-old play equipment was falling apart and expected to be ruled unsafe by inspectors later this month.

They also said there was no equipment for older children.

But the district council has turned down an application for £80,000.

Stella Mitchell, 44, of Honey Lane, Cholsey, said: “We are gutted. It seems absolutely ludicrous we cannot be awarded any money. Cholsey is one of the most deprived areas for children in South Oxfordshire and the need for new play equipment has been identified many times before.”

Cholsey Parish Council has awarded the project £20,000 and another grant of £32,000 has also been secured, but that still leaves a shortfall of £78,000.

Mother-of-three Katie Sims, 39, of Weedon Close, Cholsey, said: “It’s the only play area we have for the whole village. “A quarter of our residents are under 18 and there is nothing for them. “The way the money is allocated is completely flawed.”

Rodney Mann, cabinet member for finance at SODC, said: “We had over £2m worth of applications with £740,000 to give, and therefore some difficult decisions to make. We have a very transparent, robust and fair scoring system.

“In recent years, we have decided to award the successful projects their full request in order to give them a better chance of getting off the ground.

“In the past we found that only 50 per cent of the projects we were awarding small grants to were actually materialising.

“Unfortunately, this means we are not able to help many other well deserving projects, like Cholsey play area.”

Mr Mann said the council had suggested the Cholsey project should be split in two, with separate areas for small children and teenagers, so that applications could be made to the council’s small grants fund.