Securing Bath City FC for the future

I am a shareholder in the community ownership of Bath City Football Club so I am a bit disappointed at the negative publicity surrounding the proposed ground partial redevelopment. In all the time I have been supporting the club they have been losing money year on year. This is a reality of non-league football in this country. To keep their head above water they have been borrowing money every year to meet the running shortfall. This resulted in a debt of nearly £1.3million building up. £300,000 was raised via the community ownership subscription and paid off part of the debt, and it has left nearly £1million owing. These debts, though mainly interest free loans, fall due for repayment in the next few years. It seems to me that in order to generate sufficient funds to pay off the debt and to continue trading without accruing more debt the club needs to make significant changes. It needs to become sustainable. I know the club has already looked into moving out of Twerton Park and this does not generate enough money to make the club viable in the long term. Even by down-sizing. It has to make the most of what it has got and that means redevelopment is needed of at least part of the ground. The problem the club had was that it couldn’t generate any money to redevelop. It is fortunate therefore that Greenacre has taken the decision to redevelop Twerton High Street

so that the two can take place at the same time. The club needs the redeveloped stadium to provide fit for purpose facilities to serve the local community and thus generate on-going profit to fund the club. They would like to have things like hot desk facilities, meeting rooms, a gym and a 3G pitch that may be used by local schools, charities and community groups as well as commercially. Teaming up with Greenacre will also enable the development to offer “collective living” type housing. But these things come at an initial cost. Money the club doesn’t have. To pay for the other benefits then something must generate excess funds. The developers have identified student housing as the best way of doing this. This isn’t greed on behalf of the club. It needs the facilities to have any hope of being viable in the future. That is its long-term aim. It has looked at the options and this is the best chance of surviving into the future (and if it didn’t survive the whole site would be redeveloped). I think Bath City is going about it the right way too. It started engaging with the community around the time of the community buyout bid, and more recently last autumn and again in April. All the feedback and ideas get back to the design team and I believe more detailed plans will be revealed later in the summer. But I, for one, wouldn’t expect all the comments to be incorporated into the scheme because it is after all, a commercial venture, despite the community ambitions of the club. This matters to me because Bath City is a great little club with lovely fans. One that the people of Bath should be proud of. I want to still be going in 20 years’ time and this is the very best chance of that happening. David Bartholomew