Trust Meets Council Latest Report

Last updated : 12 October 2007 By SBT

Today (12th October) the chair, vice-chair and media co-ordinator from the Sky Blue Trust met with Barry Butterworth and Chris West from Coventry City Council. Mr West, the Director of Finance and Legal Services for the Council.

Mr West explained to the Trust how ACL as a company is currently meeting its business plan but no dividend is being paid either to Coventry City Council or the Higgs Charity as it is servicing the £21million loan that was taken out to cover building costs of the project.

Coventry City Council took over the project, due to the financial position of Coventry City Football Club. The city council negotiated to purchase the land from HBG , and also continued with previous conversations the Football Club had had with Tesco which finalised the sale of the land providing Tesco met certain conditions including the decontamination of the land, and provision of a new highways infrastructure. The money raised from this sale went straight into building the Arena and the City Council did not make any money from the sale of this land.

When asked by the Trust about the parking restrictions imposed on supporters attending the Ricoh Arena on match days, which many believe has impacted on the gates, Mr Butterworth, professional assistant to John McGuigan, stated that this was due to the Government stating that 75% of people attending the Ricoh Arena should use public transport, or use park and ride or park and walk sites to the development.

The City Council then met with various residents group for two years, to confirm the boundaries of the parking scheme. The parking scheme is currently being reviewed by the City Council, but both Chris West and Barry Butterworth vehemently denied that the parking enforcement made the City Council any money, in fact city-wide no profit is made.

Chris West closed the meeting by saying that "The arena is not actively for sale, but, we will talk to any interested party who has a reasonable offer to make".

Rachael Brown, Chair for the Sky Blue Trust said "The Trust would like to thank Chris West and Barry Butterworth for an open and frank discussion. We seek to get all the facts out into the public domain so instead of trying to work out who is to blame for the current situation at CCFC we can all work together to secure a positive future for the football club."