The latest development – or lack thereof – in the saga of Huish Park hasn’t provided any explicit clarity but if we read between the lines I think we can make some strong assumptions.
The club told me that they are continuing to “work constructively with the Council to identify a mutually agreeable position regarding the potential purchase of Huish Park. Discussions intensified earlier this year and an offer has been submitted, on which the Council has provided feedback. We are now working from that position to see where a point of agreement can be reached.” Somerset Council deny that a formal offer has been placed.
Clearly, one side thinks this is a negotiation and the other doesn’t. Somerset Council will see the terms of the buy back – closer to £3.5m and increasing, than the original £2.8m – as locked. That’s the price the owners will have to pay to reunite the land and stadium with the football club operations, a pledge made early on following their takeover.
The owners will have known that through the due diligence, but are they right to try and budge the council? At the time when the deal was announced SSDC (the council prior to the merger of all councils) said the deal would “help with the club’s survival, generate a new rental income, while protecting our ratepayers from loss or excessive risk.”
Four years on, the deal is certainly weighted in one direction, as many predicted at the time. Despite the initial claims that the deal ‘saved the club’, we’ve seen no hard evidence of what that money contributed to the club. It cleared CV Leisure’s debt with MSP capital, and I’ve been told the club saw very little of what was left after, if anything. Due diligence wasn’t done on the individual stripping the club of its assets and Somerset Council has an even higher rental income from the original deal.
“The damage done by this deal was entirely foreseeable”
We all know councils are cash-strapped, it’s a fact across the country and this month our Council tax bills are landing on the doormat with the maximum 4.99% increase. In my opinion, it’s disingenuous – still – to have ever positioned this as a deal integral to the ‘survival’ of the club. It’s not unheard of for councils to charge nominal rents to football clubs. Luton Borough Council have owned Kenilworth Road since 1989, having bought it from the club for £3.25m for a seven-year lease on a ‘peppercorn rent’ which has been extended multiple times and runs until 2028. Other examples you see are of smaller rents where the council covers the costs of running the venue. What we have is the worst of both worlds, high rent and the responsibility to maintain and operate Huish Park.
If the club was truly at the heart of this deal, the rent should not have increased, the buy back price should not increase. As it is, we’re up to nearly £230,000 a year (imagine what that would do to the playing budget) and facing an ever-increasing buyback price that any investor would want to ensure has a worthwhile return.
The damage done by this deal was entirely foreseeable. We’re on our second owner since it was completed and you need deep, deep pockets to buy it back to then develop it in the first place. Alongside operating a loss-making National League club with his expectations and high expenditure.
Of course, at the root of this there is still the fact that the deal is the deal, but I genuinely feel we have owners with good intentions and aspirations for Huish Park as a community facility, a bi-product of which would benefit the ratepayers and the people in Yeovil. The contradictory statements suggest to me that the relationship with Somerset Council isn’t quite as rosy as it could be, but in the history of Yeovil Town FC, has it ever been?