Chelsea meet their match as £1bn stadium plans are held up by the neighbours
Club owned by billionaire oligarch Abramovich ask council to override family’s right to light
AS A Russian oligarch worth an estimated £6.6 billion, Roman Abramovich will have no doubt become accustomed to getting his own way.
However, his ambitious plans to build a £1billion new stadium for his football club, Chelsea, risk being thwarted by an unlikely adversary – a family of four who fear a “loss of light” to their cottage, opposite where the redevelopment is to take place.
For more than two decades, Nicolas, 69, and Lucinda Crosthwaite, 58, have lived with their children Louis, 23, and Rose, 25, in a Fulham house opposite the Premier League team’s ground.
In 2014, the club began developing plans to create Europe’s most expensive and lavish stadium there. Last year, it was granted planning consent by Hammersmith and Fulham council and received the backing of Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, because it was expected to bring an economic boost and jobs to the area.
Although the club have agreed to compensate most of the 50 neighbouring homes that will suffer as a result of the redesign, they have reached a stalemate with the Crosthwaites.
In May, Mr Crosthwaite, a retired director of an investment company, took out a High Court injunction to stop the 60,000-capacity stadium going ahead because it will overshadow his home.
Despite two years of negotiations, with a reported six-figure offer made to the Crosthwaites, the club’s lawyers have written to the council saying the family’s opposition “poses a clear risk” to the new stadium, with funding on hold until the issue is resolved.
Now councillors are being urged to use special powers to block the family’s injunction by overriding their right to light to allow building work to begin because it is in the wider “public interest”. Councillors will vote on Monday on whether to buy the disputed land, lease it back to the club and invoke special powers to override the family’s rights to light – something that is normally set in law.
In a letter to the council, Rose Crosthwaite states that the “sunlight and daylight will be seriously affected” to five of her family home’s windows by a proposed walkway, and the stadium will have an “unacceptable and harmful” effect on the area.
The family’s lawyers say the stand that would loom over the home needs redesigning, and the planned 17,000 hospitality seats are excessive compared with stadiums at other major clubs. They add that the idea the council should ride roughshod over their rights is not in the public interest and possibly illegal.
Although a public consultation found 97.5 per cent of locals backed the redevelopment of the club’s home of 112 years, some residents in the area, where homes can cost more than £1million, have spoken out.
One homeowner, who did not want to be named, said: “Chelsea are land grabbers. They are too big and think they can do anything they want.”
Mr Crosthwaite yesterday refused to comment on his battle with Mr Abramovich, who counts Vladimir Putin among his friends.
In 2010, the roof of the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, was redesigned to allow a dip following a planning dispute with neighbours who successfully argued that the original plans would stop their “right to light”.