Bees training ground approved
CONTROVERSIAL FACILITY HAD FACED FIERCE OPPOSITION FROM NEARBY RESIDENTS
HOUNSLOW Council’s planning committee has approved plans by Brentford Football Club after hearing from furious local opposition.
The project will sit to the west of the existing first-team training facilities, known as the Robert Rowan Performance Centre, at 100 Jersey Road.
The plan includes a temporary single-storey academy building, a larger permanent maintenance building, floodlights, and multiple football pitches. These include one with an artificial surface and another having an 18-metre covering.
Brentford FC have seen success in recent years, being promoted to the Premier League in 2021 and cementing themselves as an ambitious mid-table team. Part of the requirements of the Premier League means that the club must have a certain standard of academy or it could face points deductions, fines or even regulation.
There were 91 objections to the plans laid out by the club for how it would meet this requirement and the council said it also received a petition with 152 signatures. The main sources of opposition were concerns with the locations of buildings, the speed at which the application had been brought forward, the use of floodlights, increased noise levels, more traffic, loss of privacy and the buildings being constructed on Metropolitan Open Land.
The officer who presented the application, Sophie Middleton, admitted that the application would be considered ‘inappropriate’ under the National Planning Policy Framework, but added that the council and club have explored alternative options such as designs and locations for the academy and none were deemed suitable or practical.
The western part of the site has been designated as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC), however the officer added that surveys had found that the area the plan would occupy comprised of overgrown grasslands and was not considered to be of significant ecological value.
Ms Middleton said a noise survey was also carried out at a comparable academy at Crystal Palace which found that activity on-site would increase ambient noise by 1.8 decibels – an acceptable range for the council.
Strict rules about the use of floodlights would see their usage between dawn and 9pm, while training and matches would run between 4pm and 9pm on weekdays and 10am and 4pm on weekends.
She also addressed objections filed by TFL which expressed its concern about traffic and parking – 100 parking spaces have been approved for the academy and 250 total across the whole site for around 220 people on site.
Although the GLA does not see this as sufficient the officer says that the council believes the benefits of the project outweigh the harms. The plan also includes planting 175 trees in the area and will offer the local community slots to use the new pitches, it will bring more jobs to the area and ensure Brentford’s continued position within the Premier League.
In front of a public gallery packed with local residents and objectors, Ms Middleton concluded: “On balance, it is considered that merits of the proposal including social, economic and environmental benefits including community benefits and the economic benefits associated with job creation and the presence of a Premier League club in the borough are considered to outweigh the minor harms.”
The council has also confirmed a payment of £267,000 for the borough through a Community Infrastructure Levy. Opposition residents and councillors were then given an opportunity to speak.
Locals asked the council to “defer the application because of a lack of rigour”, citing the fact that the council had given residents the wrong date for when the application would be heard, telling them it was going to be on May 9.
They claimed that without much prior warning of the change many residents had been taken off guard.
One outspoken member of the public claimed that the officer’s report was “full of lies” and said that she had been put ‘under a lot of pressure’ to get the application passed through.
Cllr Marina Sharma asked the objectors if their dispute with the plan was not simply a case of “not in my backyard” by neighbours.
Residents responded that they had seen so-called temporary buildings being erected on the site for years only to see when it was time for them to be demolished they would receive an extension.
The academy building, which will be placed on the site for a maximum of 5 years, is seen by objectors as just another example of this.
They also claimed that the club’s community promises were a “mockery”, saying that the club had made promises to the community back in January 2023 that had failed to materialise.
The group was followed up by Cllr Samia Chaudhary.
She said that as a Brentford fan herself she wanted to see the club do well but added that the impact of the plan “is not minimal or minor and all that has been said to dissipate it is the promise of the potential for community benefit.”