SPORT ENGLAND has backed a campaign to stop the closure of one of the UK’s premier squash facilities, which has been a base for Peter Nicol, the former world No 1.
In a six-page planning objection sent last week to Islington Borough Council, Peter Durrans, Sport England’s senior planning manager, said that the loss of the nine-court Lambs Club to make way for housing would be “thoroughly detrimental” to the local sporting infrastructure and to the Government’s aim of promoting a healthy lifestyle.

Its closure, which could happen as early as February, would threaten London’s reputation as the “world capital of squash” and “a hub for the international squash scene”.

Mike Corby, president of England Squash and owner of a chain of fitness clubs, sold the freehold for £4 million to a consortium involving the Buccleuchs, one of Scotland’s oldest and wealthiest families. He said that the move was not motivated by personal financial gain but the need to pay off his debts. A motion brought at England Squash’s annual meeting at the weekend that Corby should step down as president because of a conflict of interest was not carried.

The present planning application is the second to be submitted after the first was rejected in May. The deadline for objections to a revised proposal passed yesterday and the council has heard from 600 people against the development.

A petition started by the Lambs Action Group has been sent to Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, calling on him to save the club. The group will learn in about six weeks whether or not its campaign has been successful.

• DWAIN CHAMBERS, the former European 100 metres record-holder, is on a tight timeline to make the UK trials in February for the World Indoor Championships, in Moscow in March, after his two-year ban for taking steroids officially expired yesterday. Under World Anti-Doping Agency rules, the British sprinter still has to complete one mandatory test, which he can take in December at the earliest. He must pass a further random test, analysis of which takes about two weeks.
  
  
• FOOTBALL agents are seeking an official place at the game’s top table at the FA in return for introducing tighter self-regulation for their much-maligned profession. Four leading agents — Michael Kennedy, Jon Smith, Jerome Anderson and Jonathan Barnett — took their guidelines to the FA Premier League yesterday. They include introduction of a kitemark for complying agents. Dave Richards, the Premier League chairman, will take the plan to the European leagues and, it is hoped, on to Fifa, the world governing body.

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