The highly successful and popular KU Taekwondo team is being evicted from its current training location because of health and safety concerns.

The Taekwondo team recently won the inter-university competition held at Cambridge University for the third year in a row. The Cambridge Open is the first taekwondo tournament of the university calendar and the Kingston team won seven individual gold medals at this year’s event. The very next day the team won three more gold medals at the London Open in Crawley. 

The club has a big problem though as it has been told it can no longer use its current training venue at the Kingston Arena. The hall capacity at the site is 30 people but the Taekwondo society regularly has between 40-50 people training with them each week.

KU Taekwondo President Michael Nathan-Pepple said: “Taekwondo is a great sport. We have a great instructor who makes the training sessions fun. When we go to the student nationals we always get good results. We have a good structure, a good student base; we just need more people and a bigger hall to practice in.”

Finding a new place for the team to train has proved difficult however, as Rhiannon Hiscocks VP Activities for the KU Student’s Union, told us:

“Taekwondo’s facilities are too small. We could move to a bigger hall (if there was one) but the instructors may not be able to make that time and it would cost more money. We’re already pumping a lot of money into Kingston College and local schools that are better facilitated than Kingston University. The Students' Union, the University and even students themselves are paying to use these facilities. The College and the nine other venues we use every year charge hire fees. If we re-invested this money into our own facilities instead of wasting it on renting, that would be a much better use of our money.”

A Kingston University spokesman said:“The University is trying to identify sites for sports facilities and recognises the importance of students’ sporting ambitions, however as is the case for many town and city-based universities, there is a shortage of suitable land in the Kingston area on which to build facilities. The University will continue to work with the Council, through the local development framework, to try and identify potential sites for sports facilities, in particular a sports hall.”

Hopes that the University will keep Wednesdays free for sport and provide better sports facilities have been dashed.

In a week when the row over sports provision has intensified, RiverOnline has learnt that the University is unlikely to accept two key demands from Support Our Sports campaigners.

When the SOS protest took to the streets two weeks ago, the University said they were “unable to introduce a blanket ban” on Wednesday afternoon teaching, because of the “ongoing high demand for University teaching space” and because the current building works around the campuses “may, in the short term, necessitate some timetabling of classes” in that slot.

Expectations for a blanket ban in the future however have been dealt a serious blow, as a University spokesman conceded: “The current building work is only one phase of the campus development programme and more work is planned for the future.”

“Kingston University signed this agreement in 2006 and still lectures are scheduled preventing students from participating.” Rhiannon Hiscocks, VP Activities for Kingston's Student Union

Many sports matches and competitions take place on Wednesday afternoons, and SOS campaigners are protesting that lectures are "still" preventing sportsmen participating.

Organisers claim this is in spite of an agreement by the University Executive not to schedule undergraduate lectures on Wednesday afternoons.  

A spokesman for the University said: “We recognise that sports provision is important ... but we have to balance this with a number of other priorities such as teaching and learning and campus development improvements.”

Dozens of sportsmen campaigned outside the John Galsworthy Building on Wednesday ahead of the Vice Chancellor's lunchtime meeting. Protestors claim that that the building's slabs cost £2,000 each, and have criticised the University for not investing such money in building its own sports facilities.

At the ASM on Tuesday Vice Chancellor, Sir Peter Scott, would not be drawn on promising an indoor sports hall.

He said: “It’s not that we can’t afford it, but where would we put it."

Debate over the University's sports provision has further intensified through a public exchange of emails between the SU and a former KU swimmer, whose criticisms of the campaign were forwarded on by the University.

Joann Randals, who represented the University in national competitions, said: "I support the university sports department, and feel the university Student Union have approached the matter very narrow mindedly."

Neither the National Union of Students nor the British University College Sport have formally endorsed the SOS campaign over reservations that it is too heavy handed.