A FORMER pupil of prestigious Winchester College has been warned to stay away from the controversial Bar End park-and-ride extension after being sentenced in a Hampshire court.

Oliver Tate, 18, whose father Dr Nick Tate is a former headmaster at the school, received the warning from magistrates after being sentenced for criminal damage.

Police arrested Tate after he was seen throwing himself against temporary fences surrounding the six-acre site in the early hours of Saturday June 28.

Tate, a bungee jump erector from Brassey Road in Fulflood, Winchester, admitted one count of criminal damage at a hearing at Basingstoke Magistrates Court at the start of July.

The court heard how Tate had joined other environmentalists, who are still camped along Garnier Road in Winchester, to protest over plans to build a 420 space park-and-ride extension on the wildflower meadow at Bar End.

Hampshire County Council, along with Winchester City Council, say the extension is needed not only to ease congestion in the city centre, but also to improve the quality of air.

However, the campaigners say they are outraged by the plans as it means digging up the meadow, which was supposedly given to the people of Winchester for posterity after the M3 extension was driven through Twyford Down.

In court yesterday a letter from Dr Tate was read out to magistrates, telling them how well he thought his son had done in complying with an earlier court referral order given in October last year.

That order had been handed to the teenager after he was arrested for torching TV star Martin Bashir's car in Oram's Arbour last summer.

Sentencing him, the chairman of the magistrates, Mr Gordon Griffiths, told Tate: "We have taken into account your early plea, and have taken a reasonably lenient view, because criminal damage is a relatively serious offence."

He added that it was now Tate's job to stay away from the Bar End site in the future, and that if brought back before the court again, the consequences would be far more serious.