Dog owners are given red card

Members of Westgate Wanderers Football Club who train and compete on King George’s Field, Morecambe, were fed up with having to clean up the dog dirt from their pitches every week and the problem came to a head recently when a young player left the pitch covered in dog dirt.

Westgate Wanderers FC has now completed the securing of the fencing around the land it leases from Lancaster City Council meaning that it automatically qualifies as a designated Dog Ban Area under the council’s Dog Control Orders.

Signs have been put up on the site informing local residents that from Monday December 1, it will be an offence for dog walkers to allow their dogs on the land.

This also includes the rugby pitches used by Heysham High School.

Breaching the dog ban may result in the issuing of a Fixed Penalty Notice for £80 (£50 if paid within seven days) or prosecution (maximum fine £1000).

Dog walker Carol Meader said: “Local residents like myself depend on the fields to exercise our dogs and Lancaster City Council have taken it upon themselves to give away land that was never their’s to give away in the first place.

“When I first moved to Heysham over eight years ago and got my dog I was able to use the fields unimpeded and we enjoyed this use for a number of years.

“There are now notices informing all dog walkers that from December 1, we are no longer able to use what little of the field remains open for us to use to walk our dogs or risk paying a large fine.”

The large field adjacent to Levens Drive popular with dog walkers remains unaffected by the order.