CINDERFORD kids look set to get a brand new £70,000 all-weather sports pitch.

Town councillors are meeting on Monday to give the green light to a revamp of the former Double View school playing fields.

Councillors say the playing fields at Mount Pleasant are so popular they keep getting worn out.

Now they are hoping to use money from housing developers at St White's to replace the grass with an all-weather artificial surface.

Civic leaders have already been to see a new multi-use games area which has proved a hit in Ruspidge.

On Monday the playing fields committee is expected to approve the expenditure needed to create a similar one in Cinderford.

Town council chairman Graham Morgan said: "The fields at Double View are so well used that the footballers keep wearing them out.

"We have tried moving the goalposts but it still ends up quite muddy.

"We are putting the skate park in at the bottom of town and now we want to do something for the children at the top end of Cinderford.

"We went to see the multi-games area in Ruspidge and were quite impressed."

Town clerk Lynda Thomas said councillors decided some years ago that rather than make developers build play parks in the middle of their new housing estates, they would ask them to put the money into a central fund.

The Cinderford pot is divided up between the town council playing fields and parks dotted across the town.

"The town council wants them to be within easy reach of everybody," she said.

"If children have somewhere pleasant to kick a ball they are less likely to do it in the town centre."