TISA Statement on Latest Stadium for Cornwall News

We are dismayed but sadly not surprised at today’s announcement by the Stadium for Cornwall partners that they need up to £6m public funding in order that the stadium can be completed by August 2019  which is necessary to secure the future of Truro City Football Club.  What is surprising is that Cornwall Council, knowing that the S4C project was precarious and that the future of TCFC depended on it, should the developers be allowed to redevelop Treyew Road, still went ahead and approved that application.

TISA lobbied the Council, asking that if they were to approve the planning application they should at the very least, place a 106 condition on Helical Retail to place the original Silver Bow budget of £4.8m into a fund ring-fenced by the Council to go towards either the S4C or in the event that this project did not proceed, towards another permanent relocation site for TCFC.

Regrettably, the Council only required Helical to pay £2m into a ring-fenced fund allowing a payment of £2m+ to be paid directly to TCFC. 

Astonishingly, within only 48 hours of the planning application being approved, TCFC’s owners effectively put the club up for sale claiming it to be a “debt free” football club.  This leaves us to believe that the £2m+ paid by Helical to TCFC has (or soon will be) used to repay the two owners the money they put into the club in the form of directors loans.

If we are correct then, as predicted and as we warned the Strategic Planning Committee, that money rather than being available to help secure the future of Truro City is now in the pockets of departing owners, leaving the Council now expected to either conjure up a new stadium for TCFC with only £2m in the pot, or fork out up to the £6m requested today, to build the Stadium for Cornwall.

The final consideration Cornwall Council has to make is regarding the section 106 condition to approve the ‘Temporary Relocation Facility Scheme’ which could effectively move TCFC out of Cornwall to Torquay United which may in so doing, be the final nail in the Truro City Football Club coffin, with a permanent home of their own in Cornwall looking like a the faintest glimmer of hope.

 

Truro Independent Supporters Association (TISA)

23/01/2018