West Ham are to take direct control over its women’s side after the team’s chairman complained that players were suffering discrimination.

Stephen Hunt, the chairman of West Ham United Ladies, lodged a formal complaint with the Football Association after claiming his players were forced to play in last year’s kit and to pay for their own transport to games.

He also said the women’s team was unable to afford physiotherapists and players werehaving to warm up by running alongside a busy road while they had limited access to the club’s training facilities.

The kits the women have been issued with are last season’s but with new names printed on the back, he claims.

The running of West Ham United Ladies was handed over to a committee of fans and while bearing the club’s name Hunt said they were being cut off from the main club structure.

He told Standard Sport last night: “I have constantly pressed the club to commit to taking the ladies’ team in-house since I was appointed.

"Their recent actions have caused damage to the players’ training which we assume Julian would not have approved if he had known about that decision. This has always been about what is best for the players."

He has complained to the FA that the club was in breach of its obligations to promote grassroots football, and had discriminated against the women’s team. An FA spokeswoman confirmed it had received a complaint, which it was reviewing.

Following the complaint the club has now announced its intention to bring the running of the women’s side “in-house”, saying that the current arrangement, in which “the day-to-day running of the [women’s side] was transferred to a third party some years ago ... has simply not worked”.

It added in a statement: “The club have been working for some time on plans to take West Ham United Ladies FC ‘in-house’ and, in light of Mr Hunt’s most recent deeply concerning comments, we will now be seeking to do so at the earliest opportunity.

“We will, of course, seek to maintain the current West Ham United Ladies FC squad personnel where possible, and provide them with the best possible support and management moving forward.” As a result, the statement said, “women’s football at West Ham United will become bigger, better and stronger”.

The women’s team was founded in 1992 and plays in the Southern division of the FA Women’s Premier League.

