I see our "feeder club" Gateshead FC have been denied their place in the National League Play offs due to their failure to " obtain a 10 year security of tenure" at their ground where I believe they have been playing for about 50 years!!
Seems Gatehead council who own the property are in discussion with operators to take over their leisure services. Therefore could not offer the club 10 year tenure. I can understand now why Slough on Saturday made a big deal of getting a 50 year lease from their council.
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Looking into this, the Gateshead stadium is losing the council £860K a year, so they are looking to transfer the running of it to a new operator who will be required to give Gatehead FC 12 months notice if they want Gateshead to stop playing at the stadium. This means Gateshead can only guarantee a rolling next 12 months.
So the council takes the point of view that as they will not be running the stadium long term they cant guarantee the club will be playing there for the next 10 years.
Looking into this, the Gateshead stadium is losing the council £860K a year, so they are looking to transfer the running of it to a new operator who will be required to give Gatehead FC 12 months notice if they want Gateshead to stop playing at the stadium. This means Gateshead can only guarantee a rolling next 12 months.
So the council takes the point of view that as they will not be running the stadium long term they cant guarantee the club will be playing there for the next 10 years.
Are they saying that nobody knew about this until now?
We probably need Kain or Sonny to give us the insiders view!
My guess is that there must have been lots of brinkmanship going on, the club expecting the council to give way and say they would support the club if new operators weren't appointed in time, and the council not wanting to take on that obligation as they have no idea how long they would be paying £800K a year.
There is a kind of sideways relevance to us in this, as we have our development plans which are dependent on council approval, in the same way Gateshead needed council approval.
To me it seems a no brainer for the council to approve our development plan, as they will get council tax from 100+ new properties being built, plus rates on the new businesses, and the beneficial addition to the community of all weather pitch which benefits Bexley Council as they wont have put any money into this new benefit to the community.
Hopefully the developers have calculated how much the council will be making a year if this is approved, and given that figure to the council, as once the council realise they benefit, as well as the clubs playing there, they are more likely to approve it.
