KENT County Cricket Club have changed their catering structure and will push ahead with ground redevelopment plans for St Lawrence after announcing record post-tax losses of £309,998 for last season.

The staggering deficit more than doubles Kent’s previous worst returns of £138,330 dating back to 2000 and represents their first losses since 2001.

Club officials blame "seriously adverse results" from former club caterers Aramark and their own increased expenditure on players and coaching staff, which in turn failed to attract substantially bigger crowds or improve commercial income.

Kent’s honorary treasurer Alister Dunning said budgets and spending were checked every month throughout the year, but admitted finances for 2005 had been a constant worry.

Mr Dunning said: "I ask members to be understanding and take into account the business climate, not only when we put our budgets together, but also as we went through the year spending and constantly amending those budgets.

"There was a reduction in the ECB distribution and no special fees for the likes of Rob Key, who we hoped might play international cricket but in the event didn’t.

"The cost of maintaining the playing staff is also getting increasingly competitive and our player salaries and related costs increased by £93,000 and over budget.

"Many of our competitor counties are spending more than us in terms of salaries and the top five, who are mostly Test-hosting clubs, are well ahead of anything we could afford.

"On average we believe they paid £1.6million to their players in 2005 where as we paid £1.2million, that is only broadly in line with comparable clubs to Kent like Essex, Glamorgan, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Sussex and Worcestershire."

The biggest falls came within the club’s catering and bar sales franchise, previously operated by American-owned firm Aramark.

Catering franchises at Kent’s four grounds recorded modest profits of £4,719 as opposed to a £78,445 surplus in 2004.

From January, and following the cancellation of the Aramark contract, all catering and wet sales other than at Beckenham were brought in-house under the control of general manager Tony Hopkins and executive chef Nigel Bell.

Mr Dunning said: "We were over £100,000 short of our budgeted income for catering at St Lawrence, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells alone, in fact, we made a slight loss on those operations.

"There are clear problems with catering at cricket; there are multiple outlets here and at our other grounds, there might be poor weather, uncertainties over attendance or if a championship game will run its full course of four days.

"Adding together increased expenditure on players, coaching and the loss on catering, accounts for something like £280,000 of our shortfall in terms of loss against budget."

The figures will be debated at the club’s annual meeting to be held at St Lawrence on Monday, March 13.