Birtley Town Football Club has taken the difficult decision to relinquish our tenancy at Birtley Welfare Park.

The Welfare holds a special place within DH3 and for many of our committee, members, ex-players and parents, the site serves as place of happy memories throughout the years. In 2022, the club worked hard to restore the site and to add an additional 11v11 pitch to our resources.  Having occupied Birtley Welfare Park since 2022, rising costs and unsustainable maintenance have resulted in the club ending our four year tenancy this month. 

The club invested into bringing Birtley Welfare back to life in 2022.

A ‘tidy the park’ event was held in early September 2022 and this helped to ensure the site was beginning to show signs of restoration. The event brought members of the community together in collecting rubbish, cleaning the changing rooms and decorating the interior of the building. 

Birtley Town Football Club Chairman Scott Brown: “I want to thank everyone that has been involved in our project at Birtley Welfare in recent years. We are really proud of what has been achieved at the site and the ‘tidy the park’ event in September 2022 brought our community together. I would like to thank Steve Minto who was a key part of this project. Steve maintained the pitch at the site for the last 3/4 years. I’d also like to thank everyone who helped to maintain the site. It takes a lot of work from decorating, cleaning and general site maintenance. 

“This is a decision that we haven’t taken lightly. We know how much Birtley Welfare means to a lot of people in the town. With rising costs for pitch maintenance, utility bills and health & safety legislation it meant that that the cost of maintaining Birtley Welfare exceeded the cost of renting a 4G pitch. We have consulted both our junior and senior committees and this decision will not impact any of BTFC Junior teams or local pub sides who used the site. All of the teams that used the site have been relocated.” 

Birtley Town Development at our ‘tidy the park’ event.

With recent changes to the format of junior football, a large section of our Junior’s are now playing 3v3, 5v5, 7v7 and 9v9 formats.

Birtley Town Juniors Chairman Paul Beat: “We have to make sure that all of our sites are sustainable and our primary focus is on ensuring our main site at Birtley Sports Complex is fit for purpose for all formats of the game. We have some really exciting plans which we will hopefully be able to share in the next month or so. We have 45 Junior teams and 3 adult teams which I believe makes us the biggest club in Gateshead so we have an exciting future ahead. Accessing funding for Birtley Welfare has been difficult due to the lack of long-term security. I echo Scott’s words on thanking those who have been part of this project. We look forward to sharing our plans going forward.”

The club would like to pay thanks to Steve Minto and everyone involved in the maintenance at Birtley Welfare. We now continue to work closely with Football Foundation, Durham FA and Gateshead Council to implement exciting plans for our main site at Birtley Sports Complex.